TERMS STARTING WITH
The individualized life cycles in the rounds are associated with diversities in environment. Each round is a component part of a great serial order of evolution which may be summarized as the gradual descent of spirit into matter and the subsequent ascent. The first round, even on this globe, was highly spiritual and ethereal: the succeeding rounds are less so, until the middle of the fourth round is reached. After that axial period the process is reversed and by degrees the original state of ethereality is reassumed. A similar process takes place within each round, but on a minor scale — smaller cycles within a dominant one. The physical condition of the earth’s substance is modified in a corresponding way. The amazing modern discoveries of the nature of the atom, of its transmutations, and of the transformation of ‘matter’ into energy have removed any prima facie objections to such a process.
The individuals in these archaic genealogies are at one time to be considered as men, at another time as races or subdivisions of races, while on a cosmic scale they stand for various spiritual powers or celestial energies imbodied in constellations of the zodiac; whereas their wives or consorts are equivalent to the Hindu saktis, their manifested powers, attributes, or faculties in, by, and through which they express themselves. Thus the wife of such an individual is not only his companion, but the veil, sheath, or garment which encloses him.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. A distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere. 2. A subtle emanation from and enveloping living persons and things, viewed by mystics as consisting of the essence of the individual.
5vi'an ::: Indian symbol of the individual soul, the central being, the divine part which is turned to%vards the Divine, descending from there and ascending to it.
ABSOLUTE. ::: The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a quality less void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe.
Absolute Divine ::: personal, supreme and omnipresent Godhead, transcendent as well as universal, an infinite master of all relations and determinations upholding a million universes and pervading each with a single ray of his self-light.
Absolute ::: The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualitiless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and none of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 297
accrementition ::: n. --> The process of generation by development of blastema, or fission of cells, in which the new formation is in all respect like the individual from which it proceeds.
"A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements — the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress — that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
“A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements—the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress—that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
Advaita: (Skr. "non-duality") The Vedantic (q.v.) doctrine of monism advocated by Sankara (q.v.) which holds the Absolute to be personal in relation to the world, especially the philosophically untutored, but supra-personal in itself (cf. nirguna, saguna); the world and the individual to be only relatively, or phenomenally, real; and salvation to consist in insight or jnana (q.v.) after dispelling the maya (q.v.) of separateness from the divine. -- K.F.L.
Aftermath of descent: Whenever there .is a descent of the higher consciousness in the adhara: (1) Part of it is stored up in the frontal consdousness and remains there. (2) Part of it goes behind and remains as a support to the active part of the being. (3) Part flows out into the universal Nature. (4) Part is" absorbed by the inconsdent and lost to the individual cons- dousness and its action.
agami karma. ::: current karma being freshly performed by the individual; new karma accumulated in the present lifetime, added to the store of sanchita karma and carried forward into future lives; actions good and bad, expected to bear fruit in future births
aham ::: I; ego, "the sense of a separate self-existence" (same as ahaṅkara); ("the divine Aham") the individual consciousness "no longer as an obscured and limited ego, but as a centre of the Divine and of the universal consciousness embracing, utilising and transforming into harmony with the Divine all individual determinations" (same as caitanyakendra). aham aha ṁ bhart bharta
Aham (Sanskrit) Aham Ego, I, conception of one’s individuality; the basis and psychologically the magic agent which is the root of ahamkara, the organ or faculty which produces in human beings the sense of egoity or individuality on whatever plane. While this faculty is perhaps the most powerful agent in the forward drive of evolutionary unfoldment, it is, nevertheless, but an illusory manifestation within the individual of paramatman, the supreme self of the hierarchy. The individuality, which is a characteristic of the monad, is not likewise merely maya, any more than human egoity manifesting is the full expression of the cosmic paramatman. The first cosmic Logos or paramatman is as creative of multitudes of children monads as is a human being, or indeed any other entity on its own plane. Every such child-monad is identic in substance, intelligence, and consciousness with parabrahman, and yet each is an eternal individual. As the Buddhist metaphor suggests, the sea of cosmic life is divided into incomputable hosts of drops of spirit called monads, each of which is predestined to undertake through long eons its cosmic pilgrimage in evolutionary unfoldment, finally to return and merge into the cosmic sea which gave it birth — “the dew-drop slips into the shining Sea” (Light of Asia).
a) In Epistemology: The subject of knowledge is the individual knower considered either as a pure ego (see Ego, Pure), a transcendental ego (see Ego, Transcendental) or an act of awareness. (See Awareness).
Alexandrists: A term applied to a group of Aristotelians in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Besides the Scholastic followers of Aristotle there were some Greeks, whose teaching was tinged with Platonism. Another group, the Averroists, followed Aristotle as interpreted by Ibn Rushd, while a third school interpreted Aristotle in the light of the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias, hence were called Alexandrists. Against the Averroists who attributed a vague sort of immortality to the active intellect, common to all men, the Alexandrists, led by Pomponazzi, asserted the mortality of the individual human soul after its separation from universal reason. -- J.J.R.
All world-existence is manifestation, but our ignorance is the agent of a partial, limited and ignorant manifestation,— in part an expression but in part also a disguise of the original being, consciousness and delight of existence. If this state of things is permanent and unalterable, if our world must always move in this circle, if some Ignorance is the cause of all things and all action here and not a condition and circumstance, then indeed the cessation of individual ignorance could only come by an escape of the individual from world-being, and a cessation of the cosmic ignorance would be the destruction of world-being. But if this world has at its root an evolutionary principle, if our ignorance is a half-knowledge evolving towards knowledge, another account and another issue and spiritual result of our existence in material Nature, a greater manifestation here becomes possible.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 496-97
Al-Muhyi ::: The One who enlivens and enlightens! The One who enables the continuation of the individual’s life through the application of knowledge and the observation of one’s essential reality.
— (also called Kali-Kr.s.n.a bhava) the realisation of Kr.s.n.akali, a state of simultaneous Kr.s.n.abhava and Kalibhava, in which the individual soul (jiva) experiences "at once its oneness with the Ishwara [Kr.s.n.a] and its oneness with the Prakriti [Kali]" and can "enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti"; a state of perception (bhava) of brahmadarsana in which Kr.s.n.a and Kali are seen everywhere.Kr.s.n.akali darsana (Krishnakali darshana; Krishnakali-darshana;Krsnakali
Although part of the Hindu ceremonies necessitated a passing through the golden cow, as an emblem of Mother Nature, the neophyte did this in the same stooping position that was done in passing through the gallery in the ancient pyramids of Egypt. “The ceremony of passing through the Holy of Holies (now symbolized by the cow), in the beginning through the temple Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg) — in itself a symbol of Universal, abstract nature — meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the re-birth of the individual and his regeneration: the stooping man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass through the matrix of mother nature, or the physical creature ready to re-become the original spiritual Being, pre-natal Man” (SD 2:469-70).
(a) Methodological: The epistemological doctrine which considers the individual self and it states the only possible or legitimate starting point for philosophical construction. See Cogito, ergo sum; Ego-centric predicament, Subjectivism.
Among his most important works the following must be mentioned: Paz en la Guerra, 1897; De la Ensenanza Superior en Espana, 1899; En Torno al Casticismo, 1902; Amor y Pedagogia, 1902; Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, 1905; Mi Religion y Otros Ensayos, 1910; Soliloquios y Conversaciones, 1912; Contra Esto y Aquello, 1912; Ensayos, 7 vols., 1916-1920; Del Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida en los Hombres y en los Pueblos, 1914; Niebla, 1914; La Agonia del Cristianismo, 1930; etc. Unamuno conceives of everv individual man as an end in himself and not a means. Civilization has an individual responsibility towards each man. Man lives in society, but society as such is an abstraction. The concrete fact is the individual man "of flesh and blood". This doctrine of man constitutes the first principle of his entire philosophy. He develops it throughout his writings by way of a soliloquy in which he attacks the concepts of "man", "Society", "Humanity", etc. as mere abstractions of the philosophers, and argues for the "Concrete", "experiential" facts of the individual living man. On his doctrine of man as an individual fact ontologically valid, Unamuno roots the second principle of his philosophy, namely, his theory of Immortality. Faith in immortality grows out, not from the realm of reason, but from the realm of facts which lie beyond the boundaries of reason. In fact, reason as such, that is, as a logical function is absolutely disowned bv Unamuno, as useless and unjustified. The third principle of his philosophy is his theory of the Logos which has to do with man's intuition of the world and his immediate response in language and action. -- J.A.F.
Among its members W. Dubislav (1937), K. Grelling, O. Helmer, C. G. Hempel, A. Herzberg, K.. Korsch, H. Reichenbach (q.v.), M. Strauss. Many members of the following groups may be regarded as adherents of Scientific Empiricism: the Berlin Society for Scientific Philosophy, the W arsaw School, the Cambridge School for Analytic Philosophy (q.v.), further, in U. S. A., some of the representatives of contemporary Pragmatism (q.v.), especially C. W. Morris, of Neo-Realism (q.v.), and of Operationalism (q.v.). Among the individual adherents not belonging to the groups mentioned: E. Kaila (Finland), J. Jörgensen (Denmark), A. Ness (Norway); A. J. Ayer, J. H. Woodger (England); M. Boll (France); K. Popper (now New Zealand); E. Brunswik, H. Gomperz, Felix Kaufmann, R. V. Mises, L. Rougier, E. Zilsel (now in U. S. A.); E. Nagel, W. V. Quine, and many others (in U.S.A.). The general attitude and the views of Scientific Empiricism are in esential agreement with those of Logical Empiricism (see above, 1). Here, the unity of science is especially emphasized, in various respects There is a logical unity of the language of science; the concepts of different branches of science are not of fundamentally different kinds but belong to one coherent system. The unity of science in this sense is closely connected with the thesis of Physicahsm (q.v.). There is a practical task in the present stage of development, to come to a better mutual adaptation of terminologies in different branches of science. There is today no unity of the laws of science. It is an aim of the future development of science to come, if possible, to a simple set of connected, fundamental laws from which the special laws in the different branches of science, including the social sciences, can be deduced. Here also, the analysis of language is regarded as one of the chief methods of the science of science. While logical positivism stressed chiefly the logical side of this analysis, it is here carried out from various directions, including an analysis of the biological and sociological sides of the activities of language and knowledge, as they have been emphasized earlier by Pragmatism (q.v.), especially C. S. Peirce and G. H. Mead. Thus the development leads now to a comprehensive general theory of signs or semiotic (q.v.) as a basis for philosophy The following publications and meetings may be regarded as organs of this movement. The periodical "Erkenntnis", since 1930, now continued as "Journal of Unified Science" The "Encyclopedia of Unified Science", its first part ("Foundations of the Unity of Science", 2 vols.) consisting of twenty monographs (eight appeared by 1940). Here, the foundations of various fields of science are discussed, especially from the point of view of the unity of science and scientific procedure, and the relations between the fields. Thus, the work intends to serve as an introduction to the science of science (q.v.). A series of International Congresses for the Unity of Science was started by a preliminary conference in Prague 1934 (see report, Erkenntnis 5, 1935). The congresses took place at Pans in 1935 ("Actes", Pans 1936; Erkenntnis 5, 1936); at Copenhagen in 1936 (Erkenntnis 6, 1937); at Paris in 1937; at Cambridge, England, in 1938 (Erkenntnis 7, 1938); at Cambridge, Mass., in 1939 (J. Unif. Sc. 9, 1941); at Chicago in 1941. Concerning the development and the aims of this movement, see O. Neurath and C. W. Morris (for both, see above, I D), further H. Reichenbach, Ziele and Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie, 1931; S. S. Stevens, "Psychology and the Science of Science", Psych. Bull. 36, 1939 (with bibliography). Bibliographies in "Erkenntnis": 1, 1931, p. 315, p. 335 (Polish authors); 2, 1931, p. 151, p. 189; 5, 1935, p. 185, p. 195 (American authors), p. 199 (Polish authors), p. 409, larger bibliography: in Encycl. Unif. Science, vol. II, No. 10 (to ippetr in 1942). -- R.C.
Ananya: (Skr. "not other") Designating the non-otherness of the cosmic principle from the individual. -- K.F.L.
ana (vijnana; vijnanam; vijnan) ::: "the large embracing consciousness . . . which takes into itself all truth and idea and object of knowledge and sees them at once in their essence, totality and parts or aspects", the "comprehensive consciousness" which is one of the four functions of active consciousness (see ajñanam), a mode of awareness that is "the original, spontaneous, true and complete view" of existence and "of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the comprehensive intellect"; the faculty or plane of consciousness above buddhi or intellect, also called ideality, gnosis or supermind (although these are distinguished in the last period of the Record of Yoga as explained under the individual terms), whose instruments of knowledge and power form the vijñana catus.t.aya; the vijñana catus.t.aya itself; the psychological principle or degree of consciousness that is the basis of maharloka, the "World of the Vastness" that links the worlds of the transcendent existence, consciousness and bliss of saccidananda to the lower triloka of mind, life and matter, being itself usually considered the lowest plane of the parardha or higher hemisphere of existence. Vijñana is "the knowledge of the One and the Many, by which the Many are seen in the terms of the One, in the infinite unifying Truth, Right, Vast [satyam r.taṁ br.hat] of the divine existence". vij ñana ana ananda
Anaximenes of Miletus (611-547 BC) Ionian Greek philosopher, pupil of Anaximander, who held air to be the fundamental principle from which fire arose through rarefaction and water and solids arose through condensation. He also held that the universe was alive, and that the individual soul was a small portion of the most rarefied “air” or ultimate world-substance, trapped within the individual being (cf Guthrie, Greek Philosophers 80). He taught that mankind had evolved from the animals, though not in the Darwinian sense. (BCW 6:204) (BCW 11:270; IU 1:238, SD 1:77, 590)
::: "An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in all of them and in the whole nature; not merely a change of the character of the consciousness or general surrender into its hands, but a subtle intimate personal change. Even when there is an incarnation from the birth, the human elements have to be taken up, but when there is a descent, there is a total conscious substitution.” Letters on Yoga
“An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in all of them and in the whole nature; not merely a change of the character of the consciousness or general surrender into its hands, but a subtle intimate personal change. Even when there is an incarnation from the birth, the human elements have to be taken up, but when there is a descent, there is a total conscious substitution.” Letters on Yoga
Annihilation Complete destruction of consciousness is an impossibility in nature, for there can be no annihilation of the consciousness which makes the essential person. The universe is built of illimitable hosts of evolving entities existing in all-various grades of evolutionary unfoldment. All are passing through a continual series of changes — comprising the shedding of sheath after sheath — involving their essential consciousness. These entities continuously modify the vehicles through which they express themselves on the various cosmic planes. When the elements forming a compound become dissociated, the compound as such ceases to exist, at least temporarily; but there still exists that which brought the elements into the compound union. The human personality is constantly changing, even during a single life, and even more greatly through rebirth; indeed, the higher states of individualized consciousnesses, though they may endure for periods so vast as to seem to be everlasting, must disappear for a time during the kosmic pralaya. Even then, when the physical, psychic, and spiritual vehicles are reduced to unity, it is not annihilation any more than a person in dreamless sleep is annihilated while his higher self is in its original state of absolute consciousness, though it leaves no impression on the sleeping and therefore unconscious brain. “Nor is the individuality — nor even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind — lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless — from a human standpoint — the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity” (SD 1:266).
Apsaras (Sanskrit) Apsaras [from ap water + saras flowing from the verbal root sṛ to flow, glide, blow (as of wind)] Moving in the waters; a class of feminine divinities known as celestial water nymphs, whose location is commonly placed in the sky between the clouds rather than in the waters of earth, although they are often described as visiting earth. These fairy-like wives of the gandharvas (celestial musicians) can change their shape at will, often appearing as aquatic birds. In Manu they are held to be the creations of the seven manus, but in the Puranas and the Ramayana their origin is attributed to the churning of the cosmic waters, and it is said that neither gods nor asuras would have them for wives. Since mythologically they were common to all, they are called Sumadatmajas (self-willed pleasurers) — 35 million of them, of whom Kama, god of love, is lord and king. One of their roles is to act as temptresses to those too ardent for divine status. Only the individual who can withstand the perfumed entreaties of the apsarasas is worthy of full enlightenment. In the Yajur-Veda the apsarasas are called sunbeams because of their connection with the gandharva who personifies the sun.
A pupil of late followers of Hegel, he emphasized the unity of spirit which he recognized in the pure act. His philosophy is therefore called actualism. He is responsible for the philosophic theory of Fascism with the conception of the Ethic State to which the individual must be totally sacrificed.
Arbor Porphyrii: (Tree of Porphyry) A representation of the series leading from the individual by means of the numerical and specific differences (corporeal, animate, sentient, rational) to the genus subalternum et supremum. -- R.A.
Aristotle's Illusion: See Aristotle's Experiment. Arithmetic, foundations of: Arithmetic (i.e., the mathematical theory of the non-negative integers, 0, 1, 2, . . .) may be based on the five following postulates, which are due to Peano (and Dedekind, from whom Peano's ideas were partly derived): N(0) N(x) ⊃x N(S(x)). N(x) ⊃x [N(y) ⊃y [[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃x [x = y]]]. N(x) ⊃x ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[N(x)F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F [N(x) ⊃x F(x)] The undefined terms are here 0, N, S, which may be interpreted as denoting, respectively, the non-negative integer 0, the propositional function to be a non-negative integer, and the function +1 (so that S(x) is x+l). The underlying logic may be taken to be the functional calculus of second order (Logic, formal, § 6), with the addition of notations for descriptions and for functions from individuals to individuals, and the individual constant 0, together with appropriate modifications and additions to the primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference (the axiom of infinity is not needed because the Peano postulates take its place). By adding the five postulates of Peano as primitive formulas to this underlying logic, a logistic system is obtained which is adequate to extant elementary number theory (arithmetic) and to all methods of proof which have found actual employment in elementary number theory (and are normally considered to belong to elementary number theory). But of course, the system, if consistent, is incomplete in the sense of Gödel's theorem (Logic, formal, § 6).
arunachala. ::: hill of wisdom; hill of light; symbol of light; its significance for the individual is that when one gets beyond body-consciousness, the inner Self shines pure and clear; &
As a free creature, man is responsible for his freely performed actions. Man knows the basic principles of the Divine Law through the natural use of his intellect. Thus known, the Divine Law is called the natural moral law. It is immutable. Suarez' ethics provides a rational justification for most of the accepted moral standards of Christianity. The individual has rights and duties in regard to other creatures and himself; he has duties toward his Creator. The political theory of Suarez is most noted for its opposition to the divine right of kings. He held that a ruler derives his authority immediately from the consent of the people, ultimately from God. Suarez maintained that there are several forms of political organizations in which social justice may be secured.
As against the faulty ethical procedures of the past and of his own day, therefore, Kant very early conceived and developed the more critical concept of "form," -- not in the sense of a "mould" into which content is to be poured (a notion which has falselv been taken over by Kant-students from his theoretical philosophy into his ethics), but -- as a method of rational (not ratiocinative, but inductive) reflection; a method undetermined by, although not irrespective of, empirical data or considerations. This methodologically formal conception constitutes Kant's major distinctive contribution to ethical theory. It is a process of rational reflection, creative construction, and transition, and as such is held by him to be the only method capable if coping with the exigencies of the facts of hunnn experience and with the needs of moral obligation. By this method of creative construction the reflective (inductive) reason is able to create, as each new need for a next reflectively chosen step arises, a new object of "pure" -- that is to say, empirically undetermined -- "practical reason." This makes possible the transition from a present no longer adequate ethical conception or attitude to an untried and as yet "indemonstrable" object. No other method can guarantee the individual and social conditions of progress without which the notion of morality loses all assignable meaning. The newly constructed object of "pure practical reason" is assumed, in the event, to provide a type of life and conduct which, just because it is of my own construction, will be likely to be accompanied by the feeling of self-sufficiency which is the basic pre-requisite of any worthy human happiness. It is this theory which constitutes Kant's ethical formalism. See also Autonomy, Categorical Imperative, Duty, End(s), Freedom, Happiness, Law, Moral, Practical Imperative, Will. -- P. A.S.
As a mystery-name, Iao or Yaho had a far higher and more spiritual significance, representing the triune forces and substances connected with the supreme divinity of our own cosmic hierarchy, whose seat was superior to the seven heavens, and which therefore made this divinity equivalent to the universal atman, or paramatman, the cosmic spiritual light whose radiations were the individual noetic monads.
ascidiozooid ::: n. --> One of the individual members of a compound ascidian. See Ascidioidea.
As Mind is only a final action of Supermind in the descent towards creation and Life an action of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the ignorance created by this descent of Mind, so Matter, as we know it, is only the final form taken by consciousbeing as the result of that working. Matter is substance of the one conscious-being phenomenally divided within itself by the action of a universal Mind,3—a division which the individual mind repeats and dwells in, but which does not abrogate or at all diminish the unity of Spirit or the unity of Energy or the real unity of Matter.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 250
"As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
“As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
ASTROLOGY. ::: Many astrological predictions come true, quite a mass of them, if one takes all together. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, - or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indications. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and puruṣakāra, fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover, the stars often indicate several fatepossibilities; for example, that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be overcome, one can live to a predictable old age. Finally, cases are seen in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time ; but there is no longer the sure inevitability.
Astrology today is an impaired legacy from Greece and Rome through the medieval art, elaborated by the speculative industry of modern students; and that same medieval astrology was itself no more than a decayed scion of the ancient stock. Modern astrology is too often cultivated in a spirit which binds us to our personality or caters to frivolous curiosity. To the merest tyro, however, it soon becomes evident that the planets cause or indicate character and events; what use the individual makes of this knowledge depends on the motives with which it is sought. Anxiety about personal fate, the desire for influence and notoriety, the need for earning a living, or even knowledge for its own sake — such motives will qualify his attainments in proportion to the scope of the sphere to which he limits himself. As the old saying attests, the stars impel, they do not compel.
asya ::: (also called quaternary dasya in a classification used in January 1913) the highest degree of dasya, in which the "gulf or distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit . . . between the divine Origin and the emerging human current . . . is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working".
asya (dasyam) ::: the lowest form of dasya, also called primary dasya or personal / egoistic dasya, "the dasya of the servant", characterised by "that obedience to the divine impulsion which is selfchosen & depends on the individual"s intelligence of God"s will and his consent, his readiness to obey".
asya ::: same as double / secondary dasya, an intermediate form of dasya in which "we perceive that Prakriti is the only doer of all our actions voluntary or involuntary from the most deliberately concerted endeavour even to the simplest trifle", though we remain "aware of ourselves as . . . the individual ruling & sanctioning authority" and "have the power of refusing our sanction to any particular impulse of Prakriti if we choose".
A symbolic crucifixion takes place in every incarnating divinity when it takes up terrestrial life. The myth of crucifixion symbolically has therefore become by custom significant of world saviors in general, as signifying those who lay down the personal life in order to arise a regenerated and impersonal savior. While the crucifixion mythos has become the central emblem of Christianity, the general idea of crucifixion as a symbol of regeneration is connected with many religious systems. Certainly Paul uses the word in the mystic and symbolic sense, as taking place interiorly in the individual, rather than referring to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. See also CROSS.
Atash, Atash-Azar (Persian) Ātash, Ātash-Āzar, Atur (Pahlavi) Ātur, Atar (Avestan) Ātar. Fire; the name of the ninth day of the month of the ancient Iranian calendar as well as the ninth month of the year (Sagittarius). Zoroaster uses the term in the Gathas in the sense of the life-giving force or the spiritual nature of the eternal truth. It is this fire which guides the universe as well as the individual towards its destiny — perfection.
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
“A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
Atma-jnanin (Sanskrit) Ātma-jñānin [from ātman self + jñānin knower from the verbal root jñā to know] The knower of atman or the universal self; likewise one who knows the world-soul. In a more mystical sense directly applicable to the individual, atma-jnanin signifies one who knows his own inner divinity and recognizes his spiritual solidarity with the cosmic self, the paramatman of our solar system. Those who thus recognize their oneness with the cosmic divinity are mahatmas of the highest class.
Atmanam Atmana Pasya (Sanskrit) Ātmānam ātmanā paśya [from ātman self + the verbal root paś to see] See the self by the self; a favorite phrase used in Vedanta philosophy, especially by Sankaracharya. In its highest interpretation it refers to Avalokitesvara which is “in one sense ‘the divine Self perceived or seen by Self,’ the Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic distinction from its Universal Source — which becomes the object of perception for, and by the individuality centred in Buddhi, the sixth principle, — something that happens only in the highest state of Samadhi. This is applying it to the microcosm” (ML 343).
atman brahman. :::"Self is Reality"; the unity of one's true Self with the transcendent Self, or Reality; Self-Reality; the unity of all living things with the Supreme; &
Atman is also sometimes used of the universal self or spirit, called in Sanskrit Brahman or paramatman. The individual is rooted in the surrounding kosmos by three superior principles, which are that atman’s highest and most glorious parts. Atman is included among the human principles because it is the universal absolute essence of which buddhi, the soul-spirit, is the carrier, transmitting its rays to the remainder of the human constitution.
atman ::: Self; Spirit; the original and essential nature of our existence; in relation to the individual [cf. brahman] the Supreme is our own true and highest Self, atman. ::: atma [nominative] ::: atmanam [accusative]
ATMAN. ::: The Ātman is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless, unaffected by the stains of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is realised as the true being of the individual, but also more widely as the same being in all and as the Self in the cosmos; it his also a self-existence above the individual and cosmos and it is then called the Paramatma, the supreme Divine Being.
Atyantika Pralaya (Sanskrit) Ātyantika Pralaya [from ati beyond, over + anta end, limit; pra-laya from the verbal root lī to dissolve, dissolution] That which seems eternal or beyond limitation, which is beyond or more than the limit; individual pralaya or nirvana. The atyantika pralaya concerns only the individualities of certain rare entities, as it is the identification of the freed individual monad (jivanmukta) with the supreme spirit — a mahatmic state, whether temporary or lasting until the following mahakalpa. After having reached that state there is no future evolution possible, and consequently no reimbodiments till after the mahapralaya, which lasts 311,040,000,000,000 years. Since there is the probability of the jivanmukta’s reaching nirvana at an early cycle of the manvantara, this mahapralayic period may be almost doubled, and therefore is long enough to be regarded as eternal, if not endless. Atyantika pralaya is also occasionally used for absolute obscuration, as of a whole planetary chain (SD 2:309-10n).
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
Aura ::: An extremely subtle and therefore invisible essence or fluid that emanates from and surrounds not onlyhuman beings and beasts, but as a matter of fact plants and minerals also. It is one of the aspects of theauric egg and therefore the human aura partakes of all the qualities that the human constitution contains.It is at once magneto-mental and electrovital, suffused with the energies of mind and spirit -- the qualityin each case coming from an organ or center of the human constitution whence it flows. It is the sourceof the sympathies and antipathies that we are conscious of. Under the control of the human will it can beboth life-giving and healing, or death-dealing; and when the human will is passive the aura has an actionof its own which is automatic and follows the laws of character and latent impulses of the being fromwhom it emanates. Sensitives have frequently described it in more or less vague terms as a light flowingfrom the eyes or the heart or the tips of the fingers or from other parts of the body. Sometimes this fluid,instead of being colorless light, manifests itself by flashing and scintillating changes of color -- the coloror colors in each case depending not only upon the varying moods of the human individual, but alsopossessing a background equivalent to the character or nature of the individual. Animals are extremelysensitive to auras, and some beasts even descry the human being surrounded with the aura as with acloud or veil. In fact, everything has its aura surrounding it with a light or play of color, and especially isthis the case with so-called animated beings.The essential nature of the aura usually seen is astral and electrovital. The magnificent phenomena ofradiation that astronomers can discern at times of eclipse, long streamers with rosy and other coloredlight flashing forth from the body of the sun, are not flames nor anything of the sort, but are simply theelectrovital aura of the solar body -- a manifestation of solar vitality, for the sun in occultism is a livingbeing, as indeed everything else is.
Aura [from Greek, Latin aura air] A subtle invisible essence or fluid emanating from and surrounding beings, both those classed as animate and inanimate. To the eyes of clairvoyants the human aura appears as a halo of light, variously colored according to the momentary psychic and mental condition of the individual. Since everything in the universe is a center of living energies of one kind or another, it must necessarily be surrounded by a field of force, representing its radiations into the surrounding space and upon all objects within its sphere of influence. The human being is of a composite nature, and his aura will, therefore, be composite, including astral-vital, psychomental, and spiritual emanations, and any of these may be perceptible according to the plane on which the perceiver is able to function. But the aura, even though not commonly visible to our eyes, is nevertheless perceptible by the effects which it produces upon those subtle senses which all possess in addition to the conventional five. By the auras of persons we are affected, both consciously and unconsciously, and thus is explained the influence which people exercise on each other. Animals are in some ways far more sensitive to auras than we are.
authentication "security" The verification of the identity of a person or process. In a communication system, authentication verifies that messages really come from their stated source, like the signature on a (paper) letter. The most common form of authentication is typing a user name (which may be widely known or easily guessable) and a corresponding {password} that is presumed to be known only to the individual being authenticated. Another form of authentication is {biometrics}. (2007-02-22)
autocracy ::: n. --> Independent or self-derived power; absolute or controlling authority; supremacy.
Supreme, uncontrolled, unlimited authority, or right of governing in a single person, as of an autocrat.
Political independence or absolute sovereignty (of a state); autonomy.
The action of the vital principle, or of the instinctive powers, toward the preservation of the individual; also, the vital
Automatism: In mediumistic and parapsychological terminology, the collective term for automatic writing, automatic drawing (q.v.), and all other activities performed without the conscious awareness and will of the individual.
Avalokitesvara(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word: avalokita, "perceived," "seen"; Isvara, "lord"; hence "the Lord who isperceived or cognized," i.e., the spiritual entity, whether in the kosmos or in the human being, whoseinfluence is perceived and felt; the higher self. This is a term commonly employed in Buddhism, andconcerning which a number of intricate and not easily understood teachings exist. The esoteric or occultinterpretation, however, sees in Avalokitesvara what Occidental philosophy calls the Third Logos, bothcelestial and human. In the solar system it is the Third Logos thereof; and in the human being it is thehigher self, a direct and active ray of the divine monad. Technically Avalokitesvara is thedhyani-bodhisattva of Amitabha-Buddha -- Amitabha-Buddha is the kosmic divine monad of which thedhyani-bodhisattva is the individualized spiritual ray, and of this latter again the manushya-buddha orhuman buddha is a ray or offspring.
Bacteria, then, are a host of visible and invisible agents which, on our plane, subconsciously carry out many processes of evolutionary life and death. They are links in the karmic chain by which the divine recorders, who follow the immutable laws in the universal mind, return to each being the results of whatever it was the antecedent cause. Thus the bacteria of a disease will multiply and produce their injurious toxins only when the karmic conditions within or surrounding the individual provide a suitable culture-medium for them. Even then, the toxemia may or may not be modified or overcome by the natural antitoxins of the blood aided by competent medical treatment. The typical disease germs found inactive in healthy throats, etc., are instances of a karma which, paradoxically, provides a dangerous contact with individual protection. The healthy person may be an unconscious carrier of the disease germ to someone who is due to reap the full effects of causes he had set in motion at some time.
being in us for a definite end ; thirdly, liberation, that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false . and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature. The enjoyment of our libera- ted being which brings us into um'ty or union with the Supreme, is the consummation ; it is ihat for which Yoga is done.
Besides the universal intelligible being of things, Aristotle was also primarily concerned with an investigation of the being of things from the standpoint of their generation and existence. But only individual things are generated and exist. Hence, for him, substance was primarily the individual: a "this" which, in contrast with the universal or secondary substance, is not communicable to many. The Aristotelian meaning of substance may be developed from four points of view: Grammar: The nature of substance as the ultimate subject of predication is expressed by common usage in its employment of the noun (or substantive) as the subject of a sentence to signify an individual thing which "is neither present in nor predicable of a subject." Thus substance is grammatically distinguished from its (adjectival) properties and modifications which "are present in and predicable of a subject." Secondary substance is expressed by the universal term, and by its definition which are "not present in a subject but predicable of it." See Categoriae,) ch. 5. Physics: Independence of being emerges as a fundamental characteristic of substance in the analysis of change. Thus we have: Substantial change: Socrates comes to be. (Change simply). Accidental change; in a certain respect only: Socrates comes to be 6 feet tall. (Quantitative). Socrates comes to be musical (Qualitative). Socrates comes to be in Corinth (Local). As substantial change is prior to the others and may occur independently of them, so the individual substance is prior in being to the accidents; i.e., the accidents cannot exist independently of their subject (Socrates), but can be only in him or in another primary substance, while the reverse is not necessarily the case. Logic: Out of this analysis of change there also emerges a division of being into the schema of categories, with the distinction between the category of substance and the several accidental categories, such as quantity, quality, place, relation, etc. In a corresponding manner, the category of substance is first; i.e., prior to the others in being, and independent of them. Metaphysics: The character of substance as that which is present in an individual as the cause of its being and unity is developed in Aristotle's metaphysical writings, see especiallv Bk. Z, ch. 17, 1041b. Primary substnnce is not the matter alone, nor the universal form common to many, but the individual unity of matter and form. For example, each thing is composed of parts or elements, as an organism is composed of cells, yet it is not merely its elements, but has a being and unity over and above the sum of its parts. This something more which causes the cells to be this organism rather than a malignant growth, is an example of what is meant by substance in its proper sense of first substance (substantia prima). Substance in its secondary sense (substantia secunda) is the universal form (idea or species) which is individuated in each thing.
(b) External force; tending force; circumstances, such as that which completes things after Tao engenders them and the Individual Principle (te) develops them. (Lao Tzu).
(b) In a somewhat more restricted sense, individual psychology, in contrast to folk psychology, group psychology or social psychology is the investigation of the individual considered -- so far as possible -- apart from the influence of the social group of which he is a member,
bindery "networking" A {Novell Netware} database that contains definitions for entities such as users, groups, and {workgroups}. The bindery allows the network supervisor to design an organised and secure operating environment based on the individual requirements of each of these entities. The bindery has three components: objects, properties, and property data sets. Objects represent any physical or logical entity, including users, user groups, file servers. Properties are characteristics of each object (e.g. passwords, account restrictions, {internetwork addresses}). Property data sets are the values assigned to an entity's bindery properties. [Netware Version 3.11 "Concepts" documentation (a glossary of Netware-related terms)]. (1996-03-07)
Bindu ::: Symbol of the Infinite in the exceedingly small, the individual point which is yet the Universal.
b) In Psychology: The psychological subject is the individual subjected to observation. Thus the introspective psychologist may either rely on the report of another subject or he may self-introspect, i.e., serve as his own subject. (See Introspection). -- L.W.
Bird ; Symbol of the individual soul. Usually a symbol of some soul-power when it is not the soul itself. Birds often indi- cate cither mind-powers or soul-powers.
(b) Metaphysical: Subvariety of idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence. -- L.W.
Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 599
"Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
“Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
Brahman (Sanskrit) Brahman [from bṛh to expand] Sometimes Brahma or Brahm. The one reality, “the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom” (TG 62). It involves both essential consciousness and substance, and is the spiritual background of the kosmos, the Cause of all Causes, what is commonly called the Unmanifest Logos: “Brahma, the Noumenon, never rests, as IT never changes and ever IS, though IT cannot be said to be anywhere” (SD 1:374). As the fundamental cosmic fountain of consciousness and spiritual substance, Brahman is the fundamental or cosmic self which, in the case of an individual being, becomes the kshetrajna, the spiritual sun within the individual. Thus the essential self of every being or entity from cosmos to physical atom is this Brahman itself, which is the cause of the familiar saying “tat tvam asi” (you are that).
caitanyakendra (chaitanyakendra) ::: centre of consciousness; the "true centre" which "is a luminous formulation of the one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence", supporting "the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force" and revealing "the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti".
Capitalism: A mode of economic production which is characterized by the fact that the instruments of production (land, factories, raw materials, etc.) are controlled to a greater or lesser extent by private individuals or groups. Since the control an individual can exercise over means of production is never absolute and as a matter of fact fluctuates widely with the ever-changing natural and social environment, "capitalism" is a very loose term which covers a host of actually different economic systems. An implication of this basic notion of individual control is that the individual will control production in his own interests. The ideological counterpart to this fact is the concept of "profit," just as the ideological counterpart to the control itself is the myth of "private property" and "free enterprise." -- M.B.M.
Causa sui: Cause of itself; necessary existence. Causa sui conveys both a negative and a positive meaning. Negatively, it signifies that which is from itself (a se), that which does not owe its being to something else; i.e., absolute independence of being, causelessness (God as uncaused). Positively, causa sui means that whose very nature or essence involves existence; i.e., God is the ground of his own being, and regarded as "cause" of his own being, he is, as it were, efficient cause of his own existence (Descartes). Since existence necessarily follows from the very essence of that which is cause of itself, causa sui is defined as that whose nature cannot be conceived as not existing (Spinoza). -- A.G.A.B. Causality: (Lat. causa) The relationship between a cause and its effect. This relationship has been defined as a relation between events, processes, or entities in the same time series, such that when one occurs, the other necessarily follows (sufficient condition), when the latter occurs, the former must have preceded (necessary condition), both conditions a and b prevail (necessary and sufficient condition), when one occurs under certain conditions, the other necessarily follows (contributory, but not sufficient, condition) ("multiple causality" would be a case involving several causes which are severally contributory and jointly sufficient); the necessity in these cases is neither that of logical implication nor that of coercion; a relation between events, processes, or entities in the same time series such that when one occurs the other invariably follows (invariable antecedence), a relation between events, processes, or entities such that one has the efficacy to produce or alter the other; a relation between events, processes, or entities such that without one the other could not occur, as in the relation between the material out of which a product is made and the finished product (material cause), structure or form and the individual embodying it (formal cause), a goal or purpose (whether supposed to exist in the future as a special kind of entity, outside a time series, or merely as an idea of the pur-poser) and the work fulfilling it (final cause), a moving force and the process or result of its action (efficient cause); a relation between experienced events, processes, or entities and extra-experiential but either temporal or non-temporal events, processes, or entities upon whose existence the former depend; a relation between a thing and itself when it is dependent upon nothing else for its existence (self-causality); a relation between an event, process, or entity and the reason or explanation for its being; a relation between an idea and an experience whose expectation the idea arouses because of customary association of the two in this sequence; a principle or category introducing into experience one of the aforesaid types of order; this principle may be inherent in the mind, invented by the mind, or derived from experience; it may be an explanatory hypothesis, a postulate, a convenient fiction, or a necessary form of thought. Causality has been conceived to prevail between processes, parts of a continuous process, changing parts of an unchanging whole, objects, events, ideas, or something of one of these types and something of another. When an entity, event, or process is said to follow from another, it may be meant that it must succeed but can be neither contemporaneous with nor prior to the other, that it must either succeed or be contemporaneous with and dependent upon but cannot precede the other, or that one is dependent upon the other but they either are not in the same time series or one is in no time series at all.
CENT, There is no connection between the Christian concep- tion (of the Kingdom of Heaven) and the idea of the Supra- mental descent. The Christian conception supposes a state of things brought about by religious emotion' and d'mdral'purifica- tion but ' these things are no more"capable of changing the world, 'whatever value they may base for the individual, than mental idealism or any bther power yet called upon for the pur- pose] The Christian proposes to substitute the sattsic religious ego for the rajasic and tamasic cgo| but although this can be donc-as an individual achievement, it has never succeeded and win never succeed in • accomplishing itself in the mass. It has no higher spiritual or psjchological knowledge behind it and ignores the' foundation -of htimao character and the source of the difBculty — the duality 6f mind, ‘life and body. Unless there is a descent of a new Power of Consdousness, not subject to the dualities but still dynamic which will preside a new foundation and a lifting of the centre of consciousness above the mind, the
Chaitya (Sanskrit) Caitya [from the verbal root cit to think, perceive] The individual soul; also a funeral monument or memorial, often containing the ashes of the deceased. Sometimes with Buddhists, a sacred building containing a revered image.
Characterology: This name originally was used for types; thus in Aristotle and Theophrastus, and even much later, e.g. in La Bruyere. Gradually it came to signify something individual; a development paralleled by the replacement of "typical" figures on the stage by individualities. There is no agreement, even today, on the definition; confusion reigns especially because of an insufficient distinction between character, personality, and person. But all agree that character manifests itself in the behavior of a person. One can distinguish a merely descriptive approach, one of classification, and one of interpretation. The general viewpoints of interpretation influence also description and classification, since they determine what is considered "important" and lay down the rules by which to distinguish and to classify. One narrow interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of inborn properties, rooted in organic constitution; character is considered, therefore, as essentially unchangeable and predetermined. The attempts at establishing correlations between character and body-build (Kretschmer a.o.) are a special form of such narrow interpretation. It makes but little difference if, besides inborn properties, the influence of environmental factors is acknowledged. The rationalistic interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of convictions. These convictions are seen as purely intellectual in extreme rationalism (virtue is knowledge, Socrates), or as referring to the value-aspect of reality which is conceived as apprehended by other than merely intellectual operations. Thus, Spranger gives a classification according to the "central values" dominating a man's behavior. (Allport has devised practical methods of character study on this basis.) Since the idea a person has of values and their order may change, character is conceived as essentially mutable, even if far going changes may be unfrequent. Character-education is the practical application of the principles of characterology and thus depends on the general idea an author holds in regard to human nature. Character is probably best defined as the individual's way of preferring or rejecting values. It depends on the innate capacities of value-apprehension and on the way these values are presented to the individual. Therefore the enormous influence of social factors. -- R.A.
Charity [from French charite from Latin caritas] Used in some parts of the New Testament to translate the Greek agape, which is oftener translated “love” or “affection.” Agape with the early Christians meant that inner bond of blessed union which united the individual with divinity, and mankind with their fellowmen. Till our eyes are fully opened, “there abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Cor 13). This use of the word is to be distinguished from its meaning of almsgiving.
Chatur-yoni (Sanskrit) Catur-yoni Four wombs; the four modes of birth; the four ways of entering on the path of birth as decided by karma. These four ways as described in ancient books are: 1) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia; 2) birth from an egg, as birds and reptiles; 3) birth from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and 4) by sudden self-transformation, as bodhisattvas and gods (anupapadaka — “parentless”). The anupapadaka birth is brought about by the intrinsic energy and karmic merit of the individual, thus transforming himself into a nobler being.
Chela(Cela) ::: An old Indian term. In archaic times more frequently spelled and pronounced cheta or cheda. Themeaning is "servant," a personal disciple attached to the service of a teacher from whom he receivesinstruction. The idea is closely similar to the Anglo-Saxon term leorning-cneht, meaning "learningservant," a name given in Anglo-Saxon translations of the Christian New Testament to the disciples ofJesus, his "chelas." It is, therefore, a word used in old mystical scriptures for a disciple, a pupil, a learneror hearer. The relationship of teacher and disciple is infinitely more sacred even than that of parent andchild; because, while the parents give the body to the incoming soul, the teacher brings forth that soulitself and teaches it to be and therefore to see, teaches it to know and to become what it is in its inmostbeing -- that is, a divine thing.The chela life or chela path is a beautiful one, full of joy to its very end, but also it calls forth and needseverything noble and high in the learner or disciple; for the powers or faculties of the higher self must bebrought into activity in order to attain and to hold those summits of intellectual and spiritual grandeurwhere the Masters themselves live. For that, masterhood, is the end of discipleship -- not, however, thatthis ideal should be set before us merely as an end to attain to as something of benefit for one's own self,because that very thought is a selfish one and therefore a stumbling in the path. It is for the individual'sbenefit, of course; yet the true idea is that everything and every faculty that is in the soul shall be broughtout in the service of all humanity, for this is the royal road, the great royal thoroughfare, of self-conquest.The more mystical meanings attached to this term chela can be given only to those who have irrevocablypledged themselves to the esoteric life.
Choice, Moment of In theosophical literature, the point when the individual, on becoming a buddha, must decide either to renounce the world and its suffering and enter nirvana as a Pratyeka Buddha, or to return as a Buddha of Compassion to help others until all living beings reach nirvana. This decision will be determined by the aspirations and motives of the individual over many lives.
Chorea [from Greek choreia dancing] A disorder of the nervous system, characterized by a peculiar convulsive and irregular action of the voluntary muscles, especially those of the face and extremities. It has been called insanity of the muscles, since their action is without harmony or purpose, and each seems to have a will of its own. It is most common in the impressionable years of childhood and adolescence, though appearing at different ages and associated with other diseases which, as a rule, are free from choreic movements. All types have significant common features. First, that many cases are free from organic disease shows that this is a purely functional one; when it complicates other diseases, it retains the typical movements of essential chorea. Whether it develops after some infectious or exhausting condition or polluting experience, or after some mental or psychological strain or shock, like fright or fear, the choreiform reaction indicates the occurrence of an unstable balance between the physical and astral bodies and the inner and higher manasic in man. Persons who develop chorea share a common psychic susceptibility which marks those who are subject to disturbances like hysteria, mediumship, epilepsy, and other phases of obsession. In addition, there are similar signs of a besieging influence at first, as when the child grows peevish, capricious, and restless, wants improper food, is listless at school, suffers with disturbed sleep and night-terrors; and later begin the convulsive movements in the muscles which are naturally under the control of the conscious will. The individual will thus weakened and, in some cases, psychic changes like hallucinations and somnambulism, point to the characteristic action of some astral influence. Further evidence of this is seen in the danger of chorea developing into more serious nervous disorders; whereas, with proper mental, moral, and physical care, cure results when the spiritual will regains its rightful place in controlling the course of life.
Collective and Distributive Properties: A general term is taken in its collective sense when what is predicated of its applies to its designation as a whole, rather than to each of the individual members belonging to it; the distributive properties are those that apply only in the latter way. Colligation: (Lat. con + ligare, to bind) The assimilation of a number of separately observed facts to a unified conception or formula. The term was introduced by Whewcll who gives the eximple of the idea of an eliptical orbit which "unifies all observations made on the positions of a planet" (see Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, I Aphorism 1). J. S. Mill appropriates the term and carefully differentiates it from induction: whereas colligation is a simple "description" of observed facts, induction is an extension to the unknown and to the future. See Logic, III, ii, § 4. -- L.W.
Composition and Division, fallacies of: Semi-formal logical fallacies. In the fallacy of composition it is assumed that what characterizes individuals qua individuals will likewise characterize groups of these same individuals qua groups. In that of division what is taken as validly applying to the group as a whole is then assumed to apply with equal validity to the individuals constituting said group. Called semi-formal because they involve passing from the distributive to the collective use of terms and vice versa. -- C.K.D.
computer ethics "philosophy" Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?). {"Philosophical Bases of Computer Ethics", Professor Robert N. Barger (http://nd.edu/~rbarger/metaethics.html)}. {Usenet} newsgroups: {news:bit.listserv.ethics-l}, {news:alt.soc.ethics}. (1995-10-25)
Concentration With meditation, an equivalent for certain parts of yoga, as found in samadhi, dharana; the removal or surmounting of distractions originating in the mind and centering the latter on the spiritual and intellectual objective to be attained, which in the best sense is union with the inner god, the divine monad — a conscious identification of oneself with the universal through the individual’s innate divinity. The method of meditative concentration prescribed in the Bhagavad-Gita is to perform all the duties of life without either attachment or avoidance. The hindrances to concentration which are to be removed are those arising from anger, lust, vanity, fear, sloth, etc. Such obstacles are removed by lifting the mind above them or by deliberately ignoring them, since directly fighting with them serves to concentrate the mind on them, thus defeating the object aimed at; and by cultivating the spirit of impersonal love and the light of wisdom which it evokes. Thus the blending of the personal self with the impersonal self is achieved by an orderly process of self-directed evolution, first by unselfish work in the cause of humanity, continued in the various degrees of chelaship, culminating in initiation.
Conscious Illusion Theory: The theory that conscious self-illusion, semblance and deliberate make-believe are constant factors in art and art appreciation which free the individual momentarily from the practical and hum-drum and thus enhance and refresh his life. See Konrad Lange, Die bewusste Selbsttäuschung als Kern des aesthetischen Genusses, 1895. -- O.F.K.
control key "hardware" A {modifier key} found on modern {keyboards}. Holding down a control key while pressing and releasing letter keys or certain other keys generates a "{control character}". E.g. holding control and hitting "A" generates control-A ({ASCII} code 1). The ASCII code for the control character is generally 64 less than that for the unmodified character. Standard {PC} keyboards have two control keys, both labeled "Ctrl", at the bottom left and bottom right of the main block of keys. The control key does not generate any character on its own but most modern keyboards and {operating systems} allow a program to tell whether each of the individual keys on the keyboard (including modifier keys) is pressed at any time. (2015-03-07)
Conversion Disorder ::: A somatoform disorder where the individual experiences a loss of sensation or function due to a psychological belief (e.g., paralysis, blindness, deafness).
corallite ::: n. --> A mineral substance or petrifaction, in the form of coral.
One of the individual members of a compound coral; or that part formed by a single coral animal.
COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS. ::: The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic Spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though In a different
Cosmic ::: Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 260
Cosmic psychology: The science of diagnosis whereby the maladjustment of the individual to life can be treated by correctional thinking. It does not concern itself with prediction, fortune-telling, life readings, but deals with reactions developed in the individual by virtue of growth and development during his first day of life, through the law of adaptability to cosmic ray frequencies then present in the Earth’s magnetic field, and with experiences resulting from environmental stimulation of a preconditioned pattern of emotional reactions.
cosmos ::: “But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” The Life Divine
Culture: (Lat. cultura, from colo, cultivate) The intrinsic value of society. Syn. with civilization. Employed by Spengler to define a civilization in its creative growth-period. The means, i.e. the tools, customs and institutions, of social groups; or the employment of such means. In psychology, the enlightenment or education of the individual. Some distinguish culture from civilization (q.v.) the former being the effect on personal development and expression (art, science, religion) of the institutions, materials and social organization identified with the latter. -- J.K.F.
database transaction "database" A set of related changes applied to a {database}. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be {atomic}. Atomicity is one of the {ACID} properties a transaction can have, another is {isolation} - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database {cocurrently}. This is usually achieved by some form of {locking} - where one process takes exclusive control of a database {table} or {row} for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some {relational database management systems} require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors). (2013-06-03)
Decad (sometimes decade) Ten, or a group of ten; a sacred number because the universe is built on the model of the decad, the individual and the universe as a whole being tenfold though septenary in manifestation. The One or cosmic monad is sometimes spoken of as emanating the nine, and by including the One itself we get the ten rays of the Logos, the Sephiroth, etc., which are spoken of as seven in the manifested universe. The decad may be considered as a double five or as three triangles and a unity. It is represented in ancient Greece by the Pythagorean tetraktys, of which the three upper dots represent the unmanifest universe, and the lower seven the manifest.
Determination: (Lat. determinare, to limit) The limitation of a reality or thought to a narrower field than its original one. In a monistic philosophy the original, single principle must be considered as narrowed down to various genera and species, and eventually to individual existence if such be admitted, in order to introduce that differentiation of reality which is required in a multiple world. In Platonism, the Forms or Ideas are one for each type of thing but are "determined" to multiple existence by the addition of matter (Timaeus). Neo-Platonism is even more interested in real determination, since the One is the logical antecedent of the Many. Here determination is effected by the introduction of negations, or privations, into successive emanations of the One. With Boethius, mediaeval philosophy became concerned with the determination of being-in-general to an actual manifold of things. In Boethianism there is a fusion of the question of real determination with that of logical limitation of concepts. In modern thought, the problem is acute in Spinozism: universal substance (substantia, natura, Deus) must be reduced to an apparent manifold through attributes, modes to the individual. Determination is said to be by way of negation, according to Spinoza (Epist. 50), and this means that universal substance is in its perfect form indeterminate, but is thought to become determinate by a sort of logical loss of absolute perfection. The theory is brought to an almost absurd simplicity in the Ontology of Chr. Wolff, where being is pictured as successively determined to genera, species and individual. Determination is also an important factor in the developmental theories of Hegel and Bergson. -- V.J.B.
Dharma: Sanskrit for law; when used in the metaphysical or esoteric sense, it means those universal laws of Nature that sustain the operation of the Universe and the manifestations of all things; when applied to the individual, it has reference to that code of conduct that sustains the soul, and produces virtue, morality, or religious merit leading toward the development of man.
dialogical ::: From the word “dialogue.” A descriptor of any approach that acknowledges the importance of culture and intersubjectivity in molding the individual’s perception of phenomena.
Disease Broadly stated, disease is a disordered or inharmonious vital state of the organism, with more of less excess, defect, or perversion of functional activity. The condition may be some chemical or mechanical wrong which renders the body unable to respond naturally to the psychoelectric and other forces which play through and sustain the physical person. Moreover, the material and immaterial elements of the human constitution react upon each other for health or disease, because the mind and emotions on the one hand, and the organs and their functions on the other, are interrelated parts of the same entity. As a rule, this interplay between the material and the conscious person becomes a vicious circle in disease. Mental or emotional shock or strain can so affect function as to result in organic disease. Long continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious interaction of the pranic or vital currents of the body, resulting in one or another disorder, according to the type of the emotions and the individual karma.
Divine Bliss. Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine
Divine (the) ::: the Supreme Being from which all comes and in which all lives. In its supreme Truth the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and delight. The Transcendent, the Cosmic (Universal) and the Individual are three powers of the Divine, overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation.
Dondampai-denpa (Tibetan) don dam pa’i bden pa (don-dam-pe den-pa) Absolute or universal truth or reality, equivalent to the Sanskrit paramarthasatya; hence in the individual being, the highest spiritual perception and self-consciousness. The opposite of this term is kundzabchi-denpa (kun rdzob kyi bden pa, kun-dzob-kyi den-pa — illusion-creating appearance), samvritti-satya in Sanskrit — the origin of illusion or maya.
Doppelganger (German) Double-goer; usually, a species of real phantom, seen before, after, or at the time of the death of an individual, and serving as a notification or warning of the death. In some cases the double seen is that of the seer himself, though this is not the true doppelganger. The doppelganger is most often the mayavi-rupa which can be seen at even immense distances from the individual whose presentation it is, yet the term doppelganger can likewise incorrectly be applied to the very occasional projections of the astral body which, however, can at no time wander far from its physical frame. The true doppelganger or mayavi-rupa, whether seen or unseen, falls into two classes, without counting the rare cases involving the linga-sarira mentioned above: the mayavi-rupa projected by hpho-wa, by will and with the consciousness of the ego; and the occasional automatic or involuntary projections of the mayavi-rupa due to intense concentration of the mind upon something or someone.
Dragon of Wisdom Commonly an adept, one of the wise; also popularly a skilled magician — whether of the right or left path. Referring to the earliest stages of cosmogony, dragon is a term often used for the sun in its various cosmologic functions, also for the One or Logos. An important significance of the phrase is that the real initiator of humanity, or of the individual neophyte, is the person’s own higher ego.
Dual In-line Memory Module "storage" Small circuit boards carrying memory {integrated circuits}, with signal and power pins on both sides of the board, in contrast to {single-in-line memory modules} (SIMM). The individual gold or lead connectors (pins) on SIMMs, although they are on both sides of the chip, are connected to the same memory chip, while on a DIMM, the connections on each side of the module connect to different chips. This allows for a wider data path, as more modules can be accessed at once. DIMM pins are arranged in a zigzag design to allow PCB tracks to pass between them. The 8-byte DIMM format with dual-sided contacts can accommodate 4- and 16-megabit {dynamic RAM} chips, and is predicted to handle 64- and 256-Mbit devices. The 8-byte DIMM will hold up to 32 megabytes of memory using 16-Mbit DRAMs, but with the 256-Mbit future-generation DRAM, it will be able to hold a 64-Mx64 configuration. Another variation, the 72-pin {SO-DIMM}, is designed to connect directly to 32 bit data buses, and is intended for use in memory-expansion applications in {notebook computers}. A Dual in-line memory module (DIMM), as opposed to SIMMs (used by the majority of the PC industry) allows for a 128-bit data path by interleaving memory on alternating memory access cycles. SIMMs on the other hand, have a 64-bit data path. Suppliers are unanimous in their belief that the DIMM will eventually replace the SIMM as the market's preferred memory module. (1996-01-28)
Durkheim, Emile: (1858-1917) A French sociological positivist. He stressed the group mind, which for him is the point of reference for all human knowledge. The group mind has an impersonal, non-subjective character that is superior to the individual mind, and acts as a directive force for the individual agents that comprise society. He studied both religion and ethics from his positivistic point of view.
Ego, Empirical: (Lat. ego, self) The individual self, conceived as a series of conscious acts and contents which the mind is capable of cognizing by direct introspection. See Bundle Theory of Self. -- L.W.
Ego (Latin) The personal pronoun “I”; in philosophy and theosophy, the ego is the center of ‘I-am-ship’ or egoity in the human being. There are two such centers: the spiritual and impersonal, commonly called the individuality; and the personal, often called the soul or the personality. The former ego is unconditionally immortal, the latter ego is conditionally immortal, but in most cases mortal because of its lack of binding aspirations with its higher Over-self, the individuality.
Emanation doctrine: The occultist doctrine of emanation teaches that nothing can be evolved without first being involved —meaning that evolution as a way of embryonic development and eventual birth of the individual is secondary to spiritual power, the guidance by intelligent forces.
Entity: A real being; also the common element in all individuals belonging to a genus or species, which may be considered apart from the individual characteristics. Sometimes used in the sense of a vague and ill-defined reality. -- J.J.R.
Epistemological theory of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley that the individual mind is confined to the circle of its ideas, and that it cognizes an external world and other minds only by an outward projection of its inner representations. The term was employed by Avenarius, (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 1888) who criticized the theory and proposed as an alternative his own theory of pure experience which emphasizes the essential solidarity between knowing subject and object known and has been introduced into English philosophy by Ward, Stout and others. -- L.W.
Equal Intervals ::: Characteristic of a scale of measurement where the individual units possess the qualities of equal intervals. The difference between each unit of measurement is exactly the same.
Eucken, Rudolf: (1846-1926) Being a writer of wide popularity, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1908, Eucken defends a spiritualistic-idealistic metaphysics against materialistic naturalism, positivism and mechanism. Spiritual life, not being an oppositionless experience, is a struggle, a self-asserting action by resistance, a matter of great alternatives, either-ors between the natural and the spiritual, a matter of vital choice. Thus all significant oppositions are, within spiritual life itself, at once created and overcome. Immanence and transcendence, personalism and absolutism are the two native spiritual oppositions that agitate Eucken's system. Reconciliation between the vital dualities therefore depends not on mere intellectual insight, but on personal effort, courageous, heroic, militant and devoted action. He handles the basic oppositions of experience in harmony with the activist tenor of liberal Protestantism. Eucken sought to replace the prevailing intellectualistic idealism by an activistic idealism, founded on a comprehensive and historical consideration of culture at large. He sought to interpret the spiritual content of historical movements. He conceived of historical facts as being so many systematized wholes of life, for which he coined the term syntagma. His distinctive historical method consists of the reductive and the noological aspects. The former considers the parts directly in relation to an inward whole. The latter is an inner dialectic and immanent criticism of the inward principles of great minds, embracing the cosmologicnl and psychological ways of philosophical construction and transcending by the concept of spiritual life the opposition of the world and the individual soul. Preaching the need of a cultural renewal, not a few of his popularized ideas found their more articulated form in the philosophical sociology of his most eminent pupil, Max Scheler, in the cultural psychology of both Spranger and Spengler. His philosophy is essentially a call to arms against the deadening influences of modern life. -- H.H.
evolutionary programming (EP) A {stochastic} optimisation strategy originally conceived by Lawrence J. Fogel in 1960. An initially random population of individuals (trial solutions) is created. Mutations are then applied to each individual to create new individuals. Mutations vary in the severity of their effect on the behaviour of the individual. The new individuals are then compared in a "tournament" to select which should survive to form the new population. EP is similar to a {genetic algorithm}, but models only the behavioural linkage between parents and their offspring, rather than seeking to emulate specific genetic operators from nature such as the encoding of behaviour in a genome and recombination by genetic crossover. EP is also similar to an {evolution strategy} (ES) although the two approaches developed independently. In EP, selection is by comparison with a randomly chosen set of other individuals whereas ES typically uses {deterministic} selection in which the worst individuals are purged from the population. (1995-02-03)
evolution strategy (ES) A kind of {evolutionary algorithm} where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the {Technical University of Berlin} (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow. (1995-02-03)
EXPANSION OF THE HEAD. ::: The seeming expansion of the head is due to the joining of the mind with the consciousness ol the Sell or Divine above. That consciousness is wide and illimitable and, when one rises into it, the individual conscious- ness also breaks its limits and feels wide and illimitable.
Externalize: In astrological parlance, said of the event which transpires when an astrological influence is incited to action by contact with a circumstance of environment. The thought is based upon the theory that astrological influences have to do with the mental and emotional conditioning that determines the nature of the individual’s reaction to circumstances, but that they do not of themselves produce events.
External Locus of Control ::: The belief that the environment has more control over life circumstances than the individual does.
Extroversion ::: Personality style where the individual prefers outward and group activity as opposed to inward and individual activity.
Fascination Bewitching, exercising a charm or spell over another person or an animal, consciously or unconsciously, either for good or ill, but more often the word has an evil implication. True fascination is never used by any of the right-hand path, for their working is invariably by arousing the innate spiritual, intellectual, and psychic powers inherent in others, and training the individual to take command of these powers. Fascination is exercised by snakes on birds, and by the human eye on beasts. It is used as an evil power by sorcerers, and is exercised more or less consciously by ordinary people upon each other. It is even taught today as an art for swaying the minds of customers, or more obviously by advertisements offering to confer occult powers for a fee.
Father in Heaven, Father in Secret Phrases used by Jesus in the New Testament for the human divine or spiritual monad, atman or in another context atma-buddhi; and in a smaller sense Father may be applied to the higher or reincarnating ego. In the case of an individual it is his own Absolute, the crown or summit of his constitutional hierarchy, the root or seed of all that he is. In this sense likewise, one may call the Father the paramatman, the person’s spiritual self, the ray from the dhyani-buddha with which the individual is in most intimate connection. For each person the Father is his own individual Wondrous Being. Jesus bids us invoke, not an imaginary image of God, but our own spiritual self, which is in its essence one with the universal self or cosmic paramatman.
Fetish ::: A condition in which arousal and/or sexual gratification is attained through inanimate objects (shoes, pantyhose) or non-sexual body parts (feet, hair). Is considered a problem when the object is needed in order to obtain arousal or gratification and the individual can not can not complete a sexual act without this object present.
Fiery Lives They are “the seventh and highest sub-division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane” (SD 1:262n). These lives by the use of their vitality alternately allow the microbes to build up and destroy the human body. See also LIFE-ATOM (SD 1:249-50, 262-3n; 2:117)
Fires, The Forty-nine Refers to the seven states of manifestation of the one life with its various septenary subdivisions — whether these seven states of manifestation be in the kosmos or in an individualized entity. Thus cosmically it refers to the seven cosmic principles with their respective seven subdivisions. When applied to the individual it refers to its seven principles with their septenary subdivisions: “To man, it gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the manifested units in nature; but develops, furthermore, the reflection of all its Forty-nine Fires in him. Each of his seven principles is an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the seven principles of the ‘great Mother’ ” (SD 1:291).
Fire supporting the individual evolution on the earth and the psychic being is the soul-coosciousoess developing itself or rather its manifestation from life to life with the mind, vital and body as Its instruments until all is ready for the union with the
Five Because of its being one half of the perfect number (ten), five held the attention and study of all followers of the Pythagorean system of numerals. As we are now in the fifth root-race, the fifth principle (manas) takes an especially prominent position in human evolution. The five-pointed star, or again the pentagon, is the symbol of the microcosm, man, often referred to as a five-limbed man. Five “symbolizes at one and the same time the Spirit of life eternal and the Spirit of life and love terrestrial — in the human compound; and, it includes divine and infernal magic, and the universal and the individual quintessence of being” (SD 2:579).
"For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living.” Essays on the Gita
“For by an absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living.” Essays on the Gita
Force (the) ::: the Divine Force, the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible, for this Force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; in the individual it is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, for all that has to be done in the yoga.
“… for each individual is in himself the Eternal who has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life turning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective cause of rebirth and by the mind’s turning away from the knowledge of the eternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming.” The Life Divine
"For good is all that helps the individual and the world towards their divine fullness, and evil is all that retards or breaks up that increasing perfection.” The Synthesis of Yoga ::: *goodness.
“For good is all that helps the individual and the world towards their divine fullness, and evil is all that retards or breaks up that increasing perfection.” The Synthesis of Yoga
From this truly sublime cosmic idea there flowed forth coordinate ideas having application to the individual human being. For the individual human triad of atma-buddhi-manas is a reflection or ray from the cosmic triad; so that what the cosmic Father is to the universe, atman is in the human triad; the cosmic Mother corresponds to buddhi; and the cosmic Son to manas. And as the humanity of an individual resides in the manas and can become spiritual and immortal, or a christos, by alliance upwards with the other two individuals of the triad, the dogma gradually became materialized to signify that a human child was born of an immaculate mother, who in her turn was immaculately conceived without sin.
fugacious ::: a. --> Flying, or disposed to fly; fleeing away; lasting but a short time; volatile.
Fleeting; lasting but a short time; -- applied particularly to organs or parts which are short-lived as compared with the life of the individual.
Funke: German for spark. In the philosophy of J. G. Fichte, the divine spark, the life that stirs and wells up within the individual.
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grace ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Grace is something spontaneous which wells out from the Divine Consciousness as a free flow of its being. ::: It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law — for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts. ” *Letters on Yoga
"Greatest Happiness": In ethics, the basis of ethics considered as the highest good of the individual or of the greatest number of individuals. The feeling-tone of the individual, varying from tranquillity and contentment to happiness, considered as the end of all moral action, as for example in Epicurus, Lucretius and Rousseau. The welfare of the majority of individuals, or of society as a whole, considered as the end of all moral action, as for example in Plato, Bentham and Mill. The greatest possible surplus of pleasure over pain in the greatest number of individuals. Although mentioned by Plato in the Republic (IV, 420), the phrase in its current form probably originated in the English translation, in 1770, of Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene, where it occurs as "la massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero", which was rendered as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number", a phrase enunciated by Hutcheson in 1725. One of a number of ethical ideals or moral aims. The doctrine with which the phrase is most closely associated is that of John Stuart Mill, who said in his Utilitarianism (ch. II) that "the happiness which forms the . . . standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned". -- J.K.F.
Griffin, Grypes (Latin) [plural of gryps; cf Greek gryph] A creature supposed to have the fore parts and wings of an eagle and the hind parts of a lion, with either the head of a lion or an eagle; in some forms there is also a serpent’s tail. It belongs to the general class of dragons, chimeras, etc., which may be symbolic representations of abstractions, reminiscences of extinct animals, or the actual forms presented to the eye of a seer by certain cosmic powers — a familiar ancient Greek idea. Assyrian, Persian, and Greek griffins were generally represented as savage guardians of treasure, which shows them to be some of the natural energies which the individual has to defy in order to obtain such treasure. They are one way of representing the powers that guard and govern the lower kingdoms of nature, and which resist and menace whoever challenges their power and treasure; whence they appear as horrific monsters.
Group-souls The idea that there are entities which express themselves through the collectivity of the individuals of a race or nation, or other similar group, somewhat as the soul of a person may express itself through the collectivity of the living units which compose his organism. However, the living units of our body do not of themselves engender a unitary entity but, having been drawn together by similarity of karma and by the vital magnetism of the imbodied soul, form the vehicle for the expression of the entity of a higher order. The individuals of a race or nation, though drawn by similarity of karma and character into the same race or nation, do not thereby constitute a vehicle for the manifestation of any entity of a higher order which is the predominant and almost exclusive factor in the case.
Guardian Angel Christian term for the various classes of dhyanis which guard the worlds, races, nations, and mankind pertaining to them. The five middle human principles are the essence of the sixfold dhyani-chohans and of the pitris. Equivalents are daimones, genii, theoi, devas, gods, Paracelsus’ flagae, etc. The personal quality that pervades so much of Christianity represents them as special to each individual, which is true enough in a sense; and they may be anything from a ray of divine light from the core of our being, to the kind of karmic heirloom designated as one’s lucky star. As a matter of fact, there is for each human individual an ever watching, forever guiding and stimulating spiritual power within himself, his own spiritual ego which, when allowed by the brain-mind, infills the individual with its strength, wisdom, and peace.
Haecceity: (Lat. haecceitas, literally thisness) A term employed by Duns Scotus to express that by which a quiddity, or general essence, becomes an individual, particular nature, or being. That incommunicable nature which constitutes the individual difference, or individualizes singular beings belonging to a class; hence his principle of individuation. -- J.J.R.
Hallucination: A non-veridical or delusive perception of a sense object occurring when no object is in fact present to the organs of sense. (Cf. negative hallucination.) In occultistic and esoteric terminology, a state following a relaxation of the nervous system which attracts waves of astral light to the individual who thus may temporarily acquire and use extrasensory or extratemporal perception (q.v.).
Happiness: (in Kant's ethics) Kant is more concerned with happiness in terms of its ideal possibility than with its realization in actual human experience. Its ideal possibility rests on the a priori laws of intelligible freedom (vide), by which the individual through self-determination achieves unity: the self-sufficiency and harmony of his own being. "Real happiness rests with my free volition, and real contentment consists in the consciousness of freedom." (Kant.) -- P.A.S.
heart ::: n. --> A hollow, muscular organ, which, by contracting rhythmically, keeps up the circulation of the blood.
The seat of the affections or sensibilities, collectively or separately, as love, hate, joy, grief, courage, and the like; rarely, the seat of the understanding or will; -- usually in a good sense, when no epithet is expressed; the better or lovelier part of our nature; the spring of all our actions and purposes; the seat of moral life and character; the moral affections and character itself; the individual
Hepatoscopy: A form of divination, by studying the liver of a sacrificed sheep, practiced among the Babylonians, Etruscans, Hittites, etc., based on the assumption that the seat of life is in the liver, and that the structure of the world and the fortune of the individual may be traced on the liver of the animal.
He was the first to recognize a fundamental critical difference between the philosopher and the scientist. He found those genuine ideals in the pre-Socratic period of Greek culture which he regarded as essential standards for the deepening of individuality and real culture in the deepest sense, towards which the special and natural sciences, and professional or academic philosophers failed to contribute. Nietzsche wanted the philosopher to be prophetic, originally forward-looking in the clarification of the problem of existence. Based on a comprehensive critique of the history of Western civilization, that the highest values in religion, morals and philosophy have begun to lose their power, his philosophy gradually assumed the will to power, self-aggrandizement, as the all-embracing principle in inorganic and organic nature, in the development of the mind, in the individual and in society. More interested in developing a philosophy of life than a system of academic philosophy, his view is that only that life is worth living which develops the strength and integrity to withstand the unavoidable sufferings and misfortunes of existence without flying into an imaginary world.
Higher Ego The individuality, as contrasted with the personality; the higher ego lies in atma-buddhi-manas as the reincarnating ego, and is a reflection or minor projection of the higher self or atman. The higher ego is contrasted with the lower or personal ego which is formed from the kamic, astral, and physical imbodiments of the former.
Higher Self The divine-spiritual essence or essential egoity overshadowing the human being, the atma-buddhi with the efflorescence of manas. The higher self is the god within, the source of all right motive, the fountain of intuition, and the voice of divine harmony seeking to control the individual’s life and to transform or transmute all the voices of personal desire.
Hillel of Verona: (1220-1295) Physician and philosopher. His principal philosophic work, the Tagmule ha-Nefesh (Heb.) The Reward of the Soul, is devoted to two problems, that of the soul and that of reward and punishment. In his theory of the soul he follows partly Averroes (q.v.) and assumes with him that the universal Active Intellect acts upon the soul of the individual and helps to realize its powers. He rejects, though, the former's view of immortality which consists of a union of the human intellect with the universal Active Intellect. -- M.W.
Hiram Abif is a type-figure of all the saviors of humanity who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of mankind, a direct human representative of its prototype among the divinities, such as Odin and Visvakarman, the builder and artificer of the gods. Hiram Abif is also the type-figure of the individual’s inner god, crucified upon the cross of material existence.
Hocking, William Ernest: (1873) Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard. Has endeavored to blend idealism vvith pragmatism while making some concessions to realism, even is in current theory he strives for a reconciliation between laissez faire liberalism and collectivism through a midground found in the worth of the individual in a "commotive union in the coagent state," a notion comparable to the "conjunct self" of George Herbert Palmer only with a more individualistic emphasis and a current flavor. Among his works are: The Meaning of God in Human Experience, Man and the State, Types of Philosophy, Lasting Elements of Individualism and Living Religions and a World Faith. -- L.E.D.
Hostile Forces have a certain self-chosen function ::: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment.
Hypnotism ::: Derived from a Greek word hypnos, which means "sleep," and strictly speaking the word hypnotismshould be used only for those psychological-physiological phenomena in which the subject manifestingthem is in a condition closely resembling sleep. The trouble is that in any attempt to study these variouspsychological powers of the human constitution it is found that they are many and of divers kinds; butthe public, and even the technical experimenters, usually group all these psychologicalphenomena under the one word hypnotism, and therefore it is a misnomer. One of such powers, forinstance, which is well known, is called fascination. Another shows a more or less complete suspensionof the individual will and of the individual activities of him who is the sufferer from such psychologicalpower, although in other respects he may show no signs of physical sleep. Another again -- and thisperhaps is the most important of all so far as actual dangers lie -- passes under the name of suggestion, anexceedingly good name, because it describes the field of action of perhaps the most subtle and dangerousside-branch of the exercise of the general power or force emanating from the mind of the operator.The whole foundation upon which this power rests lies in the human psychological constitution; and itcan be easily and neatly expressed in a few words. It is the power emanating from one mind, which canaffect another mind and direct or misdirect the latter's course of action. This is in nine hundred andninety-nine times out of a thousand a wrong thing to do; and this fact would readily be understood byeverybody did men know, as they should, the difference between the higher and the lower nature of man,the difference between his incorruptible, death-defying individuality, his spiritual nature, on the onehand; and, on the other hand, the brain-mind and all its train of weak and fugitive thoughts.Anyone who has seen men and women in the state of hypnosis must realize not only how dangerous,how baleful and wrong it is, but also that it exemplifies the trance state perfectly. The reason is that theintermediate nature, or the psychomental apparatus, of the human being in this state has been displacedfrom its seat, in other words, is disjoined or dislocated; and there remains but the vitalized human body,with its more or less imperfect functioning of the brain cells and nervous apparatus. H. P. Blavatsky inher Theosophical Glossary writes: "It is the most dangerous of practices, morally and physically, as itinterferes with the nerve-fluid and the nerves controlling the circulation in the capillary blood-vessels."(See also Mesmerism)
Idealists regard such an equalization of physical laws and psychological, historical laws as untenable. The "tvpical case" with which physics or chemistry analyzes is a result of logical abstraction; the object of history, however, is not a unit with universal traits but something individual, in a singular space and at a particular time, never repeatable under the same circumstances. Therefore no physical laws can be formed about it. What makes it a fact worthy of historical interest, is iust the fullness of live activity in it; it is a "value", not a "thing". Granted that historical events are exposed to influences from biological, geological, racial and traditional sources, they aie always carried by a human being whose singularity of character has assimilated the forces of his environment and surmounted them There is a reciprocal action between man and society, but it is always personal initiative and free productivity of the individual which account for history. Denying, therefore, the logical primacy of physical laws in history, does not mean lawlessness, and that is the standpoint of the logic of history in more recent times. Windelband and H. Rickert established another kind of historical order of laws. On their view, to understand history one must see the facts in their relation to a universally applicable and transcendental system of values. Values "are" not, they "hold"; they are not facts but realities of our reason, they are not developed but discovered. According to Max Weber historical facts form an ideally typical, transcendental whole which, although seen, can never be fully explained. G, Simmel went further into metaphysics: "life" is declared an historical category, it is the indefinable, last reality ascending to central values which shaped cultural epochs, such as the medieval idea of God, or the Renaissance-idea of Nature, only to be tragically disappointed, whereupon other values rise up, as humanity, liberty, technique, evolution and others.
If the union between the lower or personal manas, and the individual reincarnating ego or higher manas, has not been effected during the course of past lives, then the former is left to share the fate of the lower animal, gradually to dissolve into its component life-atoms and to have its personality annihilated. But even then the spiritual ego remains of necessity a distinct being.
I. Logic of History The historical objects under observation (man, life, society, biological and geological conditions) are so diverse that even slight mistakes in evaluation of items and of the historical whole may lead to false results. This can be seen from the modern logic of history. In the 18th century, G. B. Vico contended, under the deep impression of the lawfulness prevailing in natural sciences, that historical events also follow each other according to unswerving natural laws. He assumed three stages of development, that of fantasy, of will, and of science. The encyclopedists and Saint-Simon shared his view. The individual is immersed, and driven on, by the current of social tendencies, so that Comte used to speak of an "histoire sans noms". His three stages of development were the theological, metaphysical, and scientific stage. H. Spencer and A. Fouillee regard social life as an organism unfolding itself according to immanent laws, either of racial individuality (Gobineau, Vocher de Lapauge) or of a combination of social, physical, and personal forces (Taine). The spirit of a people and of an age outweigh completely the power of an individual personality which can work only along socially conditioned tendencies. The development of a nation always follows the same laws, it may vary as to time and whereabouts but never as to the form (Burkhardt, Lamprecht). To this group of historians belong also O. Spengler and K. Marx; "Fate" rules the civilization of peoples and pushes them on to their final destination.
Immortality: (Lat. in + mortalis, mortal) The doctrine that the soul or personality of man survives the death of the body. The two principal conceptions of immortality are: temporal immortality, the indefinite continuation of the individual mind after death and eternity, ascension of the soul to a higher plane of timelessness. Immortality is properly speaking restricted to post-existence (survival after death) but is extended by the theory of transmigration of souls. (See Metempsychosis) to include pre-exisence (life before birth).
INCARNATION. ::: An incarnation is something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the
Indifference ::: The first victory is to create an individuality. And then later, the second victory is to give this individuality to the Divine. And the third victory is that the Divine changes your individuality into a divine being. There are three stages: the first is to become an individual; the second is to consecrate the individual so that he may surrender entirely to the Divine and be identified with Him; and the third is that the Divine takes possession of this individual and changes him into a being in His own image; that is, he too becomes divine.The Mother
• individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is the individual apparent being imperfect with her imperfection.
individual ::: “But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative senseof individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” Letters on Yoga
Individual: In formal logic, the individuals form the first or lowest type of Russell's hierarchy of types. In the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell, individuals are "defined as whatever is neither a proposition nor a function." It is unnecessary, however, to give the word any such special significance, and for many purposes it is better (as is often done) to take the individuals to be an arbitrary -- or an arbitrary infinite -- domain, or any particular well-defined domain may be taken as the domain of individuals, according to the purpose in hand. When used in this way, the term domain of individuals may be taken as synonymous with the term universe of discourse (in the sense of Boole) which is employed in connection with the algebra of classes. See Logic, formal, §§ 3, 6, 7. -- A.C.
Individualism: The doctrine that emphasizes the reality of the individual and concrete. Differs from Personalism (q.v.) -- R.T.F.
individualistic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the individual or individualism.
Individuality [from Latin individuum undivided thing, unit] In philosophy, as well as in theosophy, used for inherent selfhood: monad, ego, atom. Used in theosophy for the higher ego in man as contrasted with the lower ego or personality — a distinction not made in ordinary parlance, where the two words may even be used in the opposite senses. The individuality is the immortal spiritual ego or monad; whereas the personality, or lower quaternary of the septenary human constitution, is the mortal human ego which goes to pieces at death.
INDIVIDUAL. ::: The individual is the key of the evolutionary movement.
induction ::: n. --> The act or process of inducting or bringing in; introduction; entrance; beginning; commencement.
An introduction or introductory scene, as to a play; a preface; a prologue.
The act or process of reasoning from a part to a whole, from particulars to generals, or from the individual to the universal; also, the result or inference so reached.
The introduction of a clergyman into a benefice, or of
Inductive Method, Induction In logic, the process of reasoning from the parts to the whole, from the particular to the general, or from the individual to the universal; contrasted with the deductive method, which reasons from the whole to the parts, from the general to the particular, from the universal to the individual. It is associated with Aristotle as contrasted with Plato, also with Francis Bacon and modern science in general. Science endeavors to establish general laws by reasoning from particular observations; but it is necessary to assume that what is true in an individual case will be true in the general case of which it is only an instance. The hypotheses thus framed are necessarily and naturally regarded as provisional, subject to modification in the light of subsequent, more extended observations of nature. This method endeavors to come to an understanding of nature by a continued process of trial and error, the formulation of its laws becoming ever wider. But an essential part of this method itself is deductive, since we continually reason back from the provisional hypotheses we have laid down to the new facts which we seek to discover in support or in refutation of them. For this reason, the method of science has often been called a deductive-inductive method. Indeed, pure induction is probably inconceivable, since we cannot enter upon a mental process unless we first entertain some general ideas. Induction and deduction are interdependent functions of the ratiocinative mind.
Infima species: The lowest species of a classification. In Aristotle, the individual. -- R.B.W.
*". . . infinity is everywhere, once one breaks the individual limits.” Letters on Yoga **Infinity, Infinity"s, infinities.**
“… infinity is everywhere, once one breaks the individual limits.” Letters on Yoga
Initiation ::: In olden times there were seven -- and even ten -- degrees of initiation. Of these seven degrees, threeconsisted of teachings alone, which formed the preparation, the discipline, spiritual and mental andpsychic and physical -- what the Greeks called the katharsis or "cleansing." When the disciple wasconsidered sufficiently cleansed, purified, disciplined, quiet mentally, tranquil spiritually, then he wastaken into the fourth degree, which likewise consisted partly of teaching, but also in part of directpersonal introduction by the old mystical processes into the structure and operations of the universe, bywhich means truth was gained by first-hand personal experience. In other words, to speak in plain terms,his spirit-soul, his individual consciousness, was assisted to pass into other planes and realms of being,and to know and to understand by the sheer process of becoming them. A man, a mind, an understanding,can grasp and see, and thereby know, only those things which the individual entity itself is.After the fourth degree, there followed the fifth and the sixth and the seventh initiations, each in turn, andthese consisted of teachings also; but more and more as the disciple progressed -- and he was helped inthis development more and more largely as he advanced farther -- there was evolved forth in him thepower and faculties still farther and more deeply to penetrate beyond the veils of maya or illusion; until,having passed the seventh or last initiation of all of the manifest initiations, if we may call them that, hebecame one of those individuals whom theosophists call the mahatmas.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
Inner God ::: Mystics of all the ages have united in teaching this fact of the existence and ever-present power of anindividual inner god in each human being, as the first principle or primordial energy governing theprogress of man out of material life into the spiritual. Indeed, the doctrine is so perfectly universal, and isso consistent with everything that man knows when he reflects over the matter of his own spiritual andintellectual nature, that it is small wonder that this doctrine should have acquired foremost place inhuman religious and philosophical consciousness. Indeed, it may be called the very foundation-stone onwhich were builded the great systems of religious and philosophical thinking of the past; and rightly so,because this doctrine is founded on nature herself.The inner god in man, man's own inner, essential divinity, is the root of him, whence flow forth ininspiring streams into the psychological apparatus of his constitution all the inspirations of genius, all theurgings to betterment. All powers, all faculties, all characteristics of individuality, which blossomthrough evolution into individual manifestation, are the fruitage of the working in man's constitution ofthose life-giving and inspiring streams of spiritual energy.The radiant light which streams forth from that immortal center or core of our inmost being, which is ourinner god, lightens the pathway of each one of us; and it is from this light that we obtain idealconceptions. It is by this radiant light in our hearts that we can guide our feet towards an ever largerfulfilling in daily life of the beautiful conceptions which we as mere human beings dimly or clearlyperceive, as the case may be.The divine fire which moves through universal Nature is the source of the individualized divine firecoming from man's inner god.The modern Christians of a mystical bent of mind call the inner god the Christ Immanent, the immanentChristos; in Buddhism it is called the living Buddha within; in Brahmanism it is spoken of as the Brahmain his Brahmapura or Brahma-city, which is the inner constitution.Hence, call it by what name you please, the reflective and mystical mind intuitively realizes that thereworks through him a divine flame, a divine life, a divine light, and that this by whatever name we maycall it, is himself, his essential SELF. (See also God)
In orthodox Buddhism it does mean a disintegration, not of the soul — for that does not exist — but of a mental compound or stream of associations or samskaras which we mistake for our self. In illusionist Vedanta it means not a disintegration but a disappearance of a false and unreal individual self into the one real Self or Brahman j it is the idea and experience of indivi- duality that so disappears and ceases — we may say a false light that is extinguished {nirvana) in the true Light. In spiritual experience it is sometimes the loss of all sense of individuality in a boundless cosmic consciousness ; what was the individual remains only as a centre or a channel for the flow of a cosmic consciousness and cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of the cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcend- ence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. But what do we mean by the individual ? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible ; but the individual self is not this ego. The individual soul Is a spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal por- tion of the Divine but can also be described as the Divine him- self supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life.
In political philosophy, the doctrine that the state exists for the individual, not vice versa. In political economy, laissez faire system of competition.
In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of existence; it is a sensible form of the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 294
"In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of existence; it is a sensible form of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. A spiritual knowledge, moved to arrive at the true Self in us, must reject, as the traditional way of knowledge rejects, all misleading appearances. It must discover that the body is not our self, our foundation of existence; it is a sensible form of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
In relation to the universe the Supreme is Brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. All the last terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is, either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, the universe too is the play and form and cosmic soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by idea and name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of Purusha and Prakriti. Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one Spirit, one self and one existence. The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 296
In respect to the field of ethics in general, Soviet philosophers have lately been developing the doctrine known as socialist or proletarian humanism. As distinguished from "bourgeois humanism", this term signifies that system of social institutions and personal values designed to insure that there be no underprivileged gioup or class de facto excluded from full participation in the good life conceived in terms of the educational and cultural development of the individual and the full enjoyment of the things of this world. Such objectives, it is held, are only possible of attainment in a classless society where there is economic security for all. The view taken is that the freedoms and liberties proclaimed by "bourgeois humanism" represented a great historical advance, but one that was, in general, limited in application to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie (q.v.) from the restrictions of feudalism while retaining and making use, to greater or lesser extent, of slavery, serfdom and a system of private capitalism invoking the precarious economic existence and cultural darkness of large proletarian masses. While it is held that there is an absolute light binding upon all, vaguely expressed in such formulations as, each for all and all for each, it is asserted that in class society, the position and class interest of one class may motivate it to oppose a genuine application of this right, whereas the class interest of another class may coincide with such an application. It is held that the proletariat is in this latter position, for its class interest as well as its moral obligation is considered to be in abolishing itself as a proletariat, which is taken to mean, abolishing classes generally.
In Scholasticism: the operation by which the mind becomes cognizant of the universal (q.v.) as represented by the individuals. Aristotle and Thomas ascribe this operation to the active intellect (q.v.) which "illuminates" the image (phantasm) and disengages from it the universal nature to be received and made intelligible by the possible intellect. -- R.A.
In Scholasticism: Until the revival of Aristotelianism in the 13th century, universals were considered by most of the Schoolmen as real "second substances." This medieval Realism (see Realism), of those who legebant in re, found but little opposition from early Nominalists, legentes in voce, like Roscellin. The latter went to the othei extreme by declaring universal names to be nothing but the breath of the voice -- flatus vocis. Extreme realism as represented by William of Champeaux, crumbled under the attacks of Abelard who taught a modified nominalism, distinguishing, howevei, sharply between the mere word, vox, as a physical phenomenon, and the meaningful word, sermo.. His interests being much more in logic than in ontology, he did not arrive at a definite solution of the problem. Aquinas summarized and synthetisized the ideas of his predecessors by stating that the universal had real existence only as creative idea in God, ante rem, whereas it existed within experienced reality only in the individual things, in re, and as a mental fact when abstracted from the particulars in the human mind, post rem. A view much like this had been proposed previously by Avicenna to whom Aquinas seems to be indebted. Later Middle-Ages saw a rebirth of nominalistic conceptions. The new school of Terminists, as they called themselves, less crude in its ideas than Roscellin, asserted that universals are only class names. Occam is usually considered as the most prominent of the Terminists. To Aquinas, the universal was still more than a mere name; it corresponded to an ontologicil fact; the definition of the universal reproduces the essence of the things. The universals are with Occam indeed natural signs which the mind cannot help forming, whereas the terms are arbitiary, signa ad placitum. But the universal is only a sign and does not correspond to anything ontological. -- R.A.
"In spiritual experience it [nirvana]is sometimes the loss of all sense of individuality in a boundless cosmic consciousness; what was the individual remains only as a centre or a channel for the flow of a cosmic consciousness and a cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. . . Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine. But this we can do in the world and in life.” Letters on Yoga
“In spiritual experience it [nirvana]is sometimes the loss of all sense of individuality in a boundless cosmic consciousness; what was the individual remains only as a centre or a channel for the flow of a cosmic consciousness and a cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. . . Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine. But this we can do in the world and in life.” Letters on Yoga
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In the Bhagavad-Gita Isvara is that which “dwelleth in the heart of every creature” and which “causeth all things and creatures to revolve mounted upon the universal wheel of time” (chs 43; 6l). It is the essence of the spiritual monad in any individualized evolving being, the spiritual root, the god within, and the source of the spiritual and vital streams in any being which bring about its unfolding in evolution and its peregrinations through the fields of experience. Equivalent to the Father in Heaven of Jesus, and hence the source of the inner Christos or Buddha. Thus in one sense it is the individualized dhyani-buddha of every being. See also LOGOS
In the individual evolution, one must develop in oneself a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or open oneself to it.
isvara (ishwara; iswara) ::: lord; the supreme Being (purus.ottama) isvara as the Lord, "the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler" who by his conscious Power (sakti) "manifests himself in Time and governs the universe", ruling his self-creation with "an all-consciousness in which he is aware of the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them out according to the truth that is in them"; identified with Kr.s.n.a; the individual soul (purus.a or jiva) as the master of its own nature.
Isvara(Sanskrit) ::: Isvara means "lord," and is a term which is frequently applied in Hindu mythology not only tokosmic divinities, but to the expression of the cosmic spirit in the human being. Consequently, whenreference is had to the individual human being, Isvara is the divine individualized spirit in man -- man'sown personal god. It may be otherwise described as the divine ego, the child of the divine monad in aman, and in view of this fact also could be used with reference to the dhyani-buddha or to the immanentChrist in a man. In India it is a title frequently given to Siva and other gods of the Hindu pantheon.
Iswara ::: The Spirit in the cosmos is the lord, the Ishwara of all Nature, but the individual soul is likewise a representative, a delegate Ishwara, the underlord at least if not the overlord of his nature,—the recipient, agent and overseer, let us say, of his own form and use of the universal energy of Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 380
It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law—for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate—only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts.” Letters on Yoga
"It is not possible for the individual mind, so long as it remains shut up in its personality, to understand the workings of the Cosmic Will, for the standards made by the personal consciousness are not applicable to them. A cell in the body, if conscious, might also think that the human being and its actions are only the resultant of the relations and workings of a number of cells like itself and not the action of a unified self. It is only if one enters into the Cosmic Consciousness that one begins to see the forces at work and the lines on which they work and get a glimpse of the Cosmic Self and the Cosmic Mind and Will.” Letters on Yoga
“It is not possible for the individual mind, so long as it remains shut up in its personality, to understand the workings of the Cosmic Will, for the standards made by the personal consciousness are not applicable to them. A cell in the body, if conscious, might also think that the human being and its actions are only the resultant of the relations and workings of a number of cells like itself and not the action of a unified self. It is only if one enters into the Cosmic Consciousness that one begins to see the forces at work and the lines on which they work and get a glimpse of the Cosmic Self and the Cosmic Mind and Will.” Letters on Yoga
It is only in this world that the action of fate seems extraneous to human will, for in reality we are the weaver of our own fates. The Morai are karmic agents or forces rather than karma, which is fundamentally the law governing universal equilibrium. In its essence the constant working of cosmic harmony, karma must of necessity manifest itself in multimyriad forms and manners — in and through multimyriad agents or forces. Karma being essentially the law of cosmic unity and concord, it is only the individuals which disturb this universal equilibrium who can feel the reaction therefrom, whether in one life or in a later one; but the karmic effects are by no means always identic with the originating causative action of the individual, because of the karmic agents of many kinds through which karma works. Thus, the gods, all human beings, the earth itself, and all its component forces and substances are karmic agents constantly interacting upon each other; so that while abstractly the action of karma is infallible and infinitely unerring and cannot ever be escaped or set aside, its reactions upon the individual who broke its laws may take place in diverse ways and usually through agents or instruments, since karma is no individual or cosmic god.
It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our appa- rent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakrit!, of phenomenal Nature, crea- tions of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right ideotiflcadon with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the supreme.
"It [the psychic] is constantly in contact with the immanent Divine — the Divine secret in the individual.” Letters on Yoga
“It [the psychic] is constantly in contact with the immanent Divine—the Divine secret in the individual.” Letters on Yoga
IV. First Decline. (14-16 cent.) St. Thomas' position in many points had been so radical a departure from the traditional thought of Christendom that many masters in the late XIII and early XIV centuries were led to reexamine philosophy in the light of Aristotle's works. This gave rise to a critical and independent spirit which multiplied systems and prepared for the individualism of the Renaissance. Noteworthy in this movement are James of Metz, Durand de St. Pourcain (+1334), Peter Aureoli (+1322) and Henry of Harclay (+1317). The greatest figure, however, is William of Occam (+1349), founder of modern thought, who renewed the Nominalism of the XI and XII cent., restricted the realm of reason but made it quite independent in its field. In reaction to this critical and independent movement, many thinkers gathered about the two great minds of the past century. Thomas and Duns Scotus, contenting themselves with merely reproducing their masters' positions. Thus Scholasticism broke up into three camps: Thomism, Scotism and Nominalism or Terminism; the first two stagnant, the third free-lance.
Jaspers, Karl: (1883-) Inspired by Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's psychology, but aiming at a strictly scientific method, the "existentialist" Jaspers analyzes the possible attitudes of man towards the world; the decisions which the individual must make in inescapable situations like death, struggle, change, guilt; and the various ways in which man meets these situations. Motivated by the boundless desire for clarity and precision, Jaspers earnestly presents as his main objective to awaken the desire for a fuller, more genuine philosophy, these three methods of philosophizing which have existed from te earliest times to the present: Philosophical world orientation consisting in an analysis of the limitations, incompleteness and relativity of the researches, methods, world pictures of all the sciences; elucidation of existence consisting of a cognitive penetration into reality on the basis of the deepest inner decisions experienced by the individual, and striving to satisfy the deepest demands of human nature; the way of metaphysics, the never-satisfied and unending search for truth in the world of knowledge, conduct of life and in the seeking for the one being, dimly seen through antithetic thoughts, deep existential conflicts and differently conceived metaphysical symbols of the past. Realizing the decisive problematic relation between philosophy and religion in the Middle Ages, Jaspers elevates psychology and history to a more important place in the future of philosophy.
Jiva: A Sanskrit term for the principle of life, the individual soul as distinguished from the Universal Soul (purusha).
jiva-sakti (jiva-shakti) ::: the soul (jiva) that has merged its active injiva-sakti dividuality in the working of the universal sakti, but is aware of its personal existence as the individual purus.a "enabling by his participation the divine Shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara" and "enjoying all the relations with him [the isvara] which are created by her workings".
Jiva(Sanskrit) ::: This is a word meaning essentially a living being per se, apart from any attributes or qualitiesthat such living being may have or possess. It therefore is the exactly proper equivalent of thetheosophical term monad. In one sense, therefore, jiva could be also used for a life-atom, provided thatthe emphasis be laid on the word life, or rather life-entity -- not an "atom of life," but a being whoseessence is pure living individuality. Monad in its divine-spiritual essence, and life-atom in itspranic-astral-physical being -- such is a jiva; and between these two extremes are the numerous planes orsheaths on and in which the individualized consciousness works.
Jiva: (Skr.) Life; also the individual, conscious soul as distinguished from the universal soul or the Absolute. -- K.F.L.
jiva. ::: the individual self, ego or "I"-sense; ego-self which is subject to birth and death; individuality; the illusory person or self that is essentially non-existent, being a fabrication of the mind which obscures the true experience of the real Self; the appearance or illusion of a separate individual consciousness; limited consciousness which appears "as if" it is an embodied soul
Jiva ::: The individual soul manifested in the world. Monad, the living entity.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 63, 360
jiva ::: "the living entity"; the soul, the individual purus.a, "a spirit jiva and self, superior to Nature" which "consents to her acts, reflects her moods", but "is itself a living reflection or a soul-form or a self-creation of the Spirit universal and transcendent", an expression of the "principle of multiplicity in the spiritual being of the one divine Existence"; the jiva as a partial manifestation of the isvara, participating in all his powers as "witness, giver of the sanction, upholder, knower, lord", is also "the meeting-place of the play of the dual aspect of the Divine,Prakriti and Purusha, and in the higher spiritual consciousness he becomes simultaneously one with both these aspects, and there he takes up and combines all the divine relations created by their interaction".
Jivatman(Sanskrit) ::: An expressive word having much the same significance as jiva, but with emphasis laid uponthe last element of the compound, atman, "self." Jivatman is perhaps a better term for monad even thanjiva is, because it carries the clear idea of the monad in which the individual self is predominant over allother monadic attributes. One may perhaps describe it by a paraphrase as "the essential self orindividuality of the monad."Jivatman is also a term sometimes used for the universal life; but this definition, while correct in a way,is rather confusing because suggesting similarity if not identity with paramatman. Paramatman is theBrahman or universal spirit of a solar system, for instance; and paramatman is therefore the convergingpoint of a kosmic consciousness in which all the hosts of jivatmans unite as in their hierarchical head.The jivatmans of any hierarchy are like the rays from the paramatman, their divine-spiritual sun. Thejivatman, therefore, in the case of the human being, or indeed of any other evolving entity, is the spiritualmonad, or better perhaps the spiritual ego of that monad.
Jivatman, soul, psychic being ::: The Jivatma or spirit is self- existent above the manifested or instrumental being ; It is supe- rior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual.
jivatman ::: the individual self; central being; the atman, spirit or eternal self of the living being; the multiple Divine manifested here as the individualised self or spirit of the created being. [cf. jiva] ::: jivatma [nominative]
jivatma&
JlVA. ::: The individual soul manifested in the world ; the living entity ; monad.
Jnana Yoga ::: The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual
reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 38-39
Kalikr.s.n.a (Kalikrishna; Kali krishna) ::: (also called Kr.s.n.akali) the Kalikrsna union of Kali and Kr.s.n.a, whether seen in the perception (darsana) of the external world or experienced in oneself in a spiritual realisation which is the basis of karma and kama1, where Kali as prakr.ti "take[s] up the whole nature into the law of her higher divine truth and act[s] in that law offering up the universal enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya Ishwara" (Kr.s.n.a), while the individual soul (jiva) is "the channel of this action and offering".
Kapila is also one of the three secret kumaras who are the progenitors of the true spiritual self in the physical human being. In many of the old writings Kapila is also symbolic of cosmic spirit, or of the individual spiritual self who represents the highest state reached on earth. Hence the Puranas and the Ramayana relate that Sagara’s 60,000 sons were reduced to ashes by a mere glance of Kapila’s eye. This allegory symbolizes the personifications of human emotions, both passional and mental, being completely reduced to inactivity by the spiritual wisdom and purity of the sage — here the personification of wisdom itself.
karana sarira. ::: the causal body &
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Karma, Karman: (Skr.) Action, movement, deed, a category e.g. in the Vaisesika (q.v.). In Indian philosophy generally thought of as a metaphysical entity carried by the individual along in samsara (q.v.). As law, karma would be identical with physical causation or causality while working with equal rigor in man's psychic and thought life. As such it is the unmitigated law of retribution working with equal precision in "good" and "evil" deeds and thoughts, thus determining the nature and circumstances of incarnation. Karma is classified into prarabdha (effects determining the unavoidable circumstances of man's life), samcita (effects able to be expiated or neglected, e.g., through jnana), and agami (effects currently generated and determining the future). Jainas (q.v.) enumerate 148 kinds of karma. -- K.F.L.
Karma-Nemesis [from Sanskrit karma action, cause and effect + Greek Nemesis goddess of harmony or retribution] The appointed karmic lot or destiny of any entity, latent in the entity’s germinal existence and unfolded progressively in the course of its growth or evolution. The universe as a whole fulfills, in the course of its cyclic evolution, all that is contained in the germ at the dawn of its manifestation; and the individual, who in essence is a spark of the divine life, follows the same inscrutable law of destiny, as do also the worlds and all the beings in and on them.
Karma: Sanskrit for action or deed. In Hinduism and occult philosophy, the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy in deeds, speech or thought which inevitably produces a good, evil or indifferent effect, according as the action is good, evil or indifferent, and the effect itself becomes the cause of further effects. Thus karma is the law of physical causation or cause and effect, the unmitigated law of retribution, working with equal precision in good and evil thoughts and deeds, thus determining the nature and circumstances of man’s future incarnation. Thus karma is (1) action-energy, past or present, latent or manifest, actual or potential; (2) a self-operating law of cause and effect and retribution; (3) the entity of the individual or of the universe carried along in the series of the Wheel of Life (samsara ).
Karma Yoga ::: Aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 39-40
KARMA YOGA. ::: It alms at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Wilt. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an inter- ested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renuncia- tion it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre^ of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To that our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoislic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the
Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of God In the New Testament, used by John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul; it indicates a state of relative spiritual completion and attainment, not merely the afterdeath state of the “righteous” or “saved,” as seen in the statement, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Blavatsky interprets the answer in the Gospel of the Egyptians as to when the kingdom of heaven will come — “When the Two has been made One, and the Outward has become as the Inward, and the Male with the Female neither Male nor Female” — as signifying among other things, 1) the union of lower manas with the higher manas, the self-conscious raising of the personality to the individuality; and 2) the return of humankind to the androgynous state in future root-races. “Thus this Kingdom may be attained by individuals now, and by mankind in Races to come” (BCW 13:48-9; 14:55).
Kr.s.n.abhava (Krishnabhava) ::: oneness of the individual soul (jiva)Krsnabhava with Kr.s.n.a as the isvara or universal purus.a, a state which "comes by the increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara in all our being and action", reaching its perfection "when we are constantly and uninterruptedly aware of him . . . as the possessor of our being and above us as the ruler of all its workings and they become to us nothing but a manifestation of him in the existence of the Jiva"; a state of perception (bhava) of brahmadarsana in which Kr.s.n.a is seen everywhere.
Kshetrajnesvara (Sanskrit) Kṣetrajñeśvara [from kṣetra field (body) + jña knower + īśvara lord] The cognizing egoic self in the individual, the same as kshetrajna plus the suggestion of individual power implied in the word Lord.
kundalini. ::: the primordial cosmic energy located in the individual; the yogic principle of serpent power; ascending air
::: "Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
laya ::: dissolution, disappearance; annullation of the individual soul in the Infinite.
Left-Hand path ::: The approaches or methodologies that rely on the interior of the individual and collective, or the Upper- and Lower-Left quadrants.
Legal Philosophy: Deals with the philosophic principles of law and justice. The origin is to be found in ancient philosophy. The Greek Sophists criticized existing laws and customs by questioning their validity: All human rules are artificial, created by enactment or convention, as opposed to natural law, based on nature. The theory of a law of nature was further developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. According to the Stoics the natural law is based upon the eternal law of the universe; this itself is an outgrowth of universal reason, as man's mind is an offshoot of the latter. The idea of a law of nature as being innate in man was particularly stressed and popularized by Cicero who identified it with "right reason" and already contrasted it with written law that might be unjust or even tyrannical. Through Saint Augustine these ideas were transmitted to medieval philosophy and by Thomas Aquinas built into his philosophical system. Thomas considers the eternal law the reason existing in the divine mind and controlling the universe. Natural law, innate in man participates in that eternal law. A new impetus was given to Legal Philosophy by the Renaissance. Natural Jurisprudence, properly so-called, originated in the XVII. century. Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf were the most important representatives of that line of thought. Grotius, continuing the Scholastic tradition, particularly stressed the absoluteness of natural hw (it would exist even if God did not exist) and, following Jean Bodin, the sovereignty of the people. The idea of the social contract traced all political bodies back to a voluntary compact by which every individual gave up his right to self-government, or rather transferred it to the government, abandoning a state of nature which according to Hobbes must have been a state of perpetual war. The theory of the social compact more and more accepts the character of a "fiction" or of a regulative idea (Kant). In this sense the theory means that we ought to judge acts of government by their correspondence to the general will (Rousseau) and to the interests of the individuals who by transferring their rights to the commonwealth intended to establish their real liberty. Natural law by putting the emphasis on natural rights, takes on a revolutionary character. It played a part in shaping the bills of rights, the constitutions of the American colonies and of the Union, as well as of the French declaration of the rights of men and of citizens. Natural jurisprudence in the teachings of Christian Wolff and Thomasius undergoes a kind of petrification in the vain attempt to outline an elaborate system of natural law not only in the field of international or public law, but also in the detailed regulations of the law of property, of contract, etc. This sort of dogmatic approach towards the problems of law evoked the opposition of the Historic School (Gustav Hugo and Savigny) which stressed the natural growth of laws ind customs, originating from the mysterious "spirit of the people". On the other hand Immanuel Kant tried to overcome the old natural law by the idea of a "law of reason", meaning an a priori element in all existing or positive law. In his definition of law ("the ensemble of conditions according to which everyone's will may coexist with the will of every other in accordance with a general rule of liberty"), however, as in his legal philosophy in general, he still shares the attitude of the natural law doctrine, confusing positive law with the idea of just law. This is also true of Hegel whose panlogism seemed to lead in this very direction. Under the influence of epistemological positivism (Comte, Mill) in the later half of the nineteenth century, legal philosophy, especially in Germany, confined itself to a "general theory of law". Similarily John Austin in England considered philosophy of law concerned only with positive law, "as it necessarily is", not as it ought to be. Its main task was to analyze certain notions which pervade the science of law (Analytical Jurisprudence). In recent times the same tendency to reduce legal philosophy to logical or at least methodological tasks was further developed in attempting a pure science of law (Kelsen, Roguin). Owing to the influence of Darwinism and natural science in general the evolutionist and biological viewpoint was accepted in legal philosophy: comparative jurisprudence, sociology of law, the Freirecht movement in Germany, the study of the living law, "Realism" in American legal philosophy, all represent a tendency against rationalism. On the other hand there is a revival of older tendencies: Hegelianism, natural law -- especially in Catholic philosophy -- and Kantianism (beginning with Rudolf Stammler). From here other trends arose: the critical attitude leads to relativism (f.i. Gustav Radbruch); the antimetaphysical tendency towards positivism -- though different from epistemological positivism -- and to a pure theory of law. Different schools of recent philosophy have found their applications or repercussions in legal philosophy: Phenomenology, for example, tried to intuit the essences of legal institutions, thus coming back to a formalist position, not too far from the real meaning of analytical jurisprudence. Neo-positivism, though so far not yet explicitly applied to legal philosophy, seems to lead in the same direction. -- W.E.
Life as an entity or process is all that is, the basis or essence of all that is — beginningless and endless. It is the spiritual electricity, or the vital svabhava, of the monad, which it pours forth out of itself and thus produces the individual characteristics of every entity, celestial or terrestrial. As the divine monad is a breath of pure spirit, pure consciousness, life may be called the innumerable manifold phases of consciousness in time and space. “Consciousness is the Originant, and this Originant by its own inherent powers and energies, faculties and attributes, produces life out of itself: not at any one time specifically, but continuously forever, and coincidentally with its own existing duration. Consciousness and life together originate and produce thereafter from themselves what men call the manifestations of force or energy, which in its turn deposits or lays down, so to say, the matters and substances of the Universe, much as wine will deposit its lees” (ET 399 3rd & rev ed).
Likewise the reentering of the human into the divine, of the personality into the individuality, achieved in moments of samadhi even during the lifetime of the initiate on earth; also entrance of the individual into the nirvanic condition.
Longitudinal Redundancy Check "storage, communications" (LRC, Block Redundancy Check) An {error checking} method that generates a {longitudinal parity} {byte} from a specified {string} or block of {bytes} on a longitudinal track. The longitudinal parity byte is created by placing individual bytes of a string in a two-dimensional {array} and performing a {Vertical Redundancy Check} vertically and horizontally on the array, creating an extra byte. This is an improvement over the VRC because it will catch two errors in the individual characters of the string, beyond the odd errors. (2004-01-26)
Lord ::: The Spirit in the cosmos is the lord, the Ishwara of all Nature, but the individual soul is likewise a representative, a delegate Ishwara, the underlord at least if not the overlord of his nature,—the recipient, agent and overseer, let us say, of his own form and use of the universal energy of Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 380
lyrical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a lyre or harp.
Fitted to be sung to the lyre; hence, also, appropriate for song; -- said especially of poetry which expresses the individual emotions of the poet.
Madhav: “The manifestation of the One as the Individual, the Universal and the Transcendent: it is triple act of self-revelation.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Magnitude ::: Characteristic of a scale of measurement where the individual units possess the qualities of greater than, equal to, or less than.
Mahat or universal mind is the source of manas: what manas is in the human constitution, mahat is in the cosmic constitution. Manas is thus a direct ray from the cosmic mahat. Manas is sometimes loosely called the kshetrajna or real incarnating and permanent spiritual ego, the individuality; but the kshetrajna strictly speaking is the buddhi-manas or higher manas.
mail exploder "messaging" Part of an {electronic mail} delivery system which allows a message to be delivered to a list of addresses. Mail exploders are used to implement {mailing lists}. Users send messages to a single address and the mail exploder takes care of delivery to the individual {mailboxes} in the list. (1996-02-26)
Manas: Sanskrit for mind or mentality. The reasoning faculty, intelligence, understanding, the individual mind, the power of attention, selection and rejection.
Manifestation ::: A generalizing term signifying not only the beginning but the continuance of organized kosmic activity,the latter including the various minor activities within itself. First there is of course always the Boundlessin all its infinite planes and worlds or spheres, aggregatively symbolized by the circle; then parabrahman,or the kosmic life-consciousness activity, and mulaprakriti its other pole, signifying root-natureespecially in its substantial aspects. Then the next stage lower, Brahman and its veil pradhana; thenBrahma-prakriti or Purusha-prakriti (prakriti being also maya); the manifested universe appearingthrough and by this last, Brahma-prakriti, "father-mother." In other words, the second Logos orfather-mother is the producing cause of manifestation through their son which, in a planetary chain, is theprimordial or the originating manu, called Svayambhuva.When manifestation opens, prakriti becomes or rather is maya; and Brahma, the father, is the spirit of theconsciousness, or the individuality. These two, Brahma and prakriti, are really one, yet they are also thetwo aspects of the one life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much as a man himself can say, "I am I."He has the faculty of self-analysis or self-division. All of us know it, we can feel it in ourselves -- oneside of us, in our thoughts, can be called the prakriti or the material element, or the mayavi element, orthe element of illusion; and the other is the spirit, the individuality, the god within.The student should note carefully that manifestation is but a generalizing term, comprehensive thereforeof a vast number of different and differing kinds of evolving planes or realms. For instance, there ismanifestation on the divine plane; there is manifestation also on the spiritual plane; and similarly so onall the descending stages of the ladder or stair of life. There are universes whose "physical" plane isutterly invisible to us, so high is it; and there are other universes in the contrary direction, so far beneathour present physical plane that their ethereal ranges of manifestation are likewise invisible to us.
Man ::: Man is in his essence a spark of the central kosmic spiritual fire. Man being an inseparable part of theuniverse of which he is the child -- the organism of graded consciousness and substance which thehuman constitution contains or rather is -- is a copy of the graded organism of consciousnesses andsubstances of the universe in its various planes of being, inner and outer, especially inner as being by farthe more important and larger, because causal.Human beings are one class of "young gods" incarnated in bodies of flesh at the present stage of theirown particular evolutionary journey. The human stage of evolution is about halfway between theundeveloped life-atom and the fully developed kosmic spirit or god.From another point of view, man is a sheaf or bundle of forces or energies. Force and matter, or spiritand substance being fundamentally one, hence, man is de facto a sheaf or bundle of matters of variousand differing grades of ethereality, or of substantiality; and so are all other entities and thingseverywhere.Man's nature, and the nature of the universe likewise, of which man is a reflection or microcosm or "littleworld," is composite of seven stages or grades or degrees of ethereality or of substantiality; or,kosmically speaking, of three generally inclusive degrees: gods, monads, and atoms. And so far as man isconcerned, we may take the New Testament division of the Christians, which gives the same triformconception of man, that he is composed of spirit, soul, body -- remembering, however, that all these threewords are generalizing terms.Man stands at the midway point of the evolutionary ladder of life: below him are the hosts of beings lessthan he is; above him are other hosts greater than he is only because older in experience, riper in wisdom,stronger in spiritual and in intellectual fiber and power. And these beings are such as they are because ofthe evolutionary unfoldment of the inherent faculties and powers immanent in the individuality of theinner god -- the ever-living, inner, individualized spirit.Man, then, like everything else -- entity or what is called "thing" -- is, to use the modern terminology ofphilosophical scientists, an "event," that is to say, the expression of a central consciousness-center ormonad passing through one or another particular phase of its long, long pilgrimage over and throughinfinity, and through eternity. This, therefore, is the reason why the theosophist often speaks of themonadic consciousness-center as the pilgrim of eternity.Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential upadhis or bases: first, the monadic ordivine-spiritual; second, that which is supplied by the Lords of Light, the so-called manasa-dhyanis,meaning the intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that makes man Man; and thethird upadhi we may call the vital-astral-physical.These three bases spring from three different lines of evolution, from three different and separatehierarchies of being. This is the reason why man is composite. He is not one sole and unmixed entity; heis a composite entity, a "thing" built up of various elements, and hence his principles are to a certainextent separable. Any one of these three bases can be temporarily separated from the two others withoutbringing about the death of the man physically. But the elements that go to form any one of these basescannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution or inner dissolution.These three lines of evolution, these three aspects or qualities of man, come from three differenthierarchies or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The lowest comes from thevital-astral-physical earth, ultimately from the moon, our cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasicor intellectualintuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the monad of monads, the supreme flower oracme, or rather the supreme seed of the universal hierarchy which forms our kosmical universe oruniversal kosmos.
Marcus Aurelius: (121-180 A.D.) The Roman Emperor who as a Stoic endowed chairs in Athens for the four great philosophical schools of the Academy, the Lyceum, The Garden and the Stoa. Aurelius' Stoicism, tempered by his friend Fronto's humanism, held to a rational world-order and providence as well as to a notion of probable truth rather than of the Stoic infallibilism. In the famous 12 books of Meditations, the view is prominent that death was as natural as birth and development was the end of the individual and should elicit the fear of no one. His harsh treatment of the Christians did not coincide with his mild nature which may have reflected the changed character of Stoicism brought on by the decadence of Rome.
::: "Maya is the supreme and universal consciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite and, being by its very nature unbound and illimitable, it can put forth many states of consciousness at a time, many dispositions of its Force, without ceasing to be the same consciousness-force for ever. It is at once transcendental, universal and individual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as All-Being, as the Cosmic Self, as the Consciousness-Force of cosmic Nature, and at the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in all existences.” The Life Divine
“Maya is the supreme and universal consciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite and, being by its very nature unbound and illimitable, it can put forth many states of consciousness at a time, many dispositions of its Force, without ceasing to be the same consciousness-force for ever. It is at once transcendental, universal and individual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as All-Being, as the Cosmic Self, as the Consciousness-Force of cosmic Nature, and at the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in all existences.” The Life Divine
“Maya is the supreme and universal consciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite and, being by its very natureunbound and illimitable, it can put forth many states of consciousness at a time, many dispositions of its Force, without ceasing to be the same consciousness-force for ever. It is at once transcendental, universal and individual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as All-Being, as the Cosmic Self, as the Consciousness-Force of cosmic Nature, and at the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in all existences.” The Life Divine
Mead, George Herbert: (1863-1931) Professor of Philosophy at Chicago University. One of the leading figures in the Deweyan tradition. He contributed an important article to the volume, Creative Intelligence. He emphasized the relationship between the individual and his formulation and testing of hypotheses, on the one hand, as against the organic relationship of the individual with the society which is responsible for him. -- L.E.D.
Mean: In general, that which in some way mediates or occupies a middle position among various things or between two extremes. Hence (especially in the plural) that through which an end is attained; in mathematics the word is used for any one of various notions of average; in ethics it represents moderation, temperance, prudence, the middle way. In mathematics: The arithmetic mean of two quantities is half their sum; the arithmetic mean of n quantities is the sum of the n quantities, divided by n. In the case of a function f(x) (say from real numbers to real numbers) the mean value of the function for the values x1, x2, . . . , xn of x is the arithmetic mean of f(x1), f(x2), . . . , f(xn). This notion is extended to the case of infinite sets of values of x by means of integration; thus the mean value of f(x) for values of x between a and b is ∫f(x)dx, with a and b as the limits of integration, divided by the difference between a and b. The geometric mean of or between, or the mean proportional between, two quantities is the (positive) square root of their product. Thus if b is the geometric mean between a and c, c is as many times greater (or less) than b as b is than a. The geometric mean of n quantities is the nth root of their product. The harmonic mean of two quantities is defined as the reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of their reciprocals. Hence the harmonic mean of a and b is 2ab/(a + b). The weighted mean or weighted average of a set of n quantities, each of which is associated with a certain number as weight, is obtained by multiplying each quantity by the associated weight, adding these products together, and then dividing by the sum of the weights. As under A, this may be extended to the case of an infinite set of quantities by means of integration. (The weights have the role of estimates of relative importance of the various quantities, and if all the weights are equal the weighted mean reduces to the simple arithmetic mean.) In statistics, given a population (i.e., an aggregate of observed or observable quantities) and a variable x having the population as its range, we have: The mean value of x is the weighted mean of the values of x, with the probability (frequency ratio) of each value taken as its weight. In the case of a finite population this is the same as the simple arithmetic mean of the population, provided that, in calculating the arithmetic mean, each value of x is counted as many times over as it occurs in the set of observations constituting the population. In like manner, the mean value of a function f(x) of x is the weighted mean of the values of f(x), where the probability of each value of x is taken as the weight of the corresponding value of f(x). The mode of the population is the most probable (most frequent) value of x, provided there is one such. The median of the population is so chosen that the probability that x be less than the median (or the probability that x be greater than the median) is ½ (or as near ½ as possible). In the case of a finite population, if the values of x are arranged in order of magnitude --repeating any one value of x as many times over as it occurs in the set of observations constituting the population --then the middle term of this series, or the arithmetic mean of the two middle terms, is the median. --A.C. In cosmology, the fundamental means (arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic) were used by the Greeks in describing or actualizing the process of becoming in nature. The Pythagoreans and the Platonists in particular made considerable use of these means (see the Philebus and the Timaeus more especially). These ratios are among the basic elements used by Plato in his doctrine of the mixtures. With the appearance of the qualitative physics of Aristotle, the means lost their cosmological importance and were thereafter used chiefly in mathematics. The modern mathematical theories of the universe make use of the whole range of means analyzed by the calculus of probability, the theory of errors, the calculus of variations, and the statistical methods. In ethics, the 'Doctrine of the Mean' is the moral theory of moderation, the development of the virtues, the determination of the wise course in action, the practice of temperance and prudence, the choice of the middle way between extreme or conflicting decisions. It has been developed principally by the Chinese, the Indians and the Greeks; it was used with caution by the Christian moralists on account of their rigorous application of the moral law. In Chinese philosophy, the Doctrine of the Mean or of the Middle Way (the Chung Yung, literally 'Equilibrium and Harmony') involves the absence of immoderate pleasure, anger, sorrow or joy, and a conscious state in which those feelings have been stirred and act in their proper degree. This doctrine has been developed by Tzu Shu (V. C. B.C.), a grandson of Confucius who had already described the virtues of the 'superior man' according to his aphorism "Perfect is the virtue which is according to the mean". In matters of action, the superior man stands erect in the middle and strives to follow a course which does not incline on either side. In Buddhist philosophy, the System of the Middle Way or Madhyamaka is ascribed more particularly to Nagarjuna (II c. A.D.). The Buddha had given his revelation as a mean or middle way, because he repudiated the two extremes of an exaggerated ascetlsm and of an easy secular life. This principle is also applied to knowledge and action in general, with the purpose of striking a happy medium between contradictory judgments and motives. The final objective is the realization of the nirvana or the complete absence of desire by the gradual destruction of feelings and thoughts. But while orthodox Buddhism teaches the unreality of the individual (who is merely a mass of causes and effects following one another in unbroken succession), the Madhyamaka denies also the existence of these causes and effects in themselves. For this system, "Everything is void", with the legitimate conclusion that "Absolute truth is silence". Thus the perfect mean is realized. In Greek Ethics, the doctrine of the Right (Mean has been developed by Plato (Philebus) and Aristotle (Nic. Ethics II. 6-8) principally, on the Pythagorean analogy between the sound mind, the healthy body and the tuned string, which has inspired most of the Greek Moralists. Though it is known as the "Aristotelian Principle of the Mean", it is essentially a Platonic doctrine which is preformed in the Republic and the Statesman and expounded in the Philebus, where we are told that all good things in life belong to the class of the mixed (26 D). This doctrine states that in the application of intelligence to any kind of activity, the supreme wisdom is to know just where to stop, and to stop just there and nowhere else. Hence, the "right-mean" does not concern the quantitative measurement of magnitudes, but simply the qualitative comparison of values with respect to a standard which is the appropriate (prepon), the seasonable (kairos), the morally necessary (deon), or generally the moderate (metrion). The difference between these two kinds of metretics (metretike) is that the former is extrinsic and relative, while the latter is intrinsic and absolute. This explains the Platonic division of the sciences into two classes: those involving reference to relative quantities (mathematical or natural), and those requiring absolute values (ethics and aesthetics). The Aristotelian analysis of the "right mean" considers moral goodness as a fixed and habitual proportion in our appetitions and tempers, which can be reached by training them until they exhibit just the balance required by the right rule. This process of becoming good develops certain habits of virtues consisting in reasonable moderation where both excess and defect are avoided: the virtue of temperance (sophrosyne) is a typical example. In this sense, virtue occupies a middle position between extremes, and is said to be a mean; but it is not a static notion, as it leads to the development of a stable being, when man learns not to over-reach himself. This qualitative conception of the mean involves an adaptation of the agent, his conduct and his environment, similar to the harmony displayed in a work of art. Hence the aesthetic aspect of virtue, which is often overstressed by ancient and neo-pagan writers, at the expense of morality proper. The ethical idea of the mean, stripped of the qualifications added to it by its Christian interpreters, has influenced many positivistic systems of ethics, and especially pragmatism and behaviourism (e.g., A. Huxley's rule of Balanced Excesses). It is maintained that it is also involved in the dialectical systems, such as Hegelianism, where it would have an application in the whole dialectical process as such: thus, it would correspond to the synthetic phase which blends together the thesis and the antithesis by the meeting of the opposites. --T.G. Mean, Doctrine of the: In Aristotle's ethics, the doctrine that each of the moral virtues is an intermediate state between extremes of excess and defect. -- O.R.M.
Mediator An agent who stands or goes between, specifically one who acts as the conscious agent or intermediary of special spiritual power and knowledge. Most often applied to highly-evolved characters who mediate, not only between superhuman spiritual entities and ordinary men, but who also themselves consciously unite their own spiritual nature with their merely human souls. Such people attain to this lofty state by the great sanctity and wisdom of their lives, aided by frequent interior ecstatic contemplation. They radiate a pure and beneficent atmosphere which invites, and is congenial to, exalted spiritual beings of the solar system. Evil entities of the astral realms cannot endure their clean and highly magnetic aura, nor are they able to continue obsessing other unfortunate persons if the mediator be present and will their departure, or even approaches the sufferer. This powerful spiritual self-consciousness of the individual who is a mediator reaching upwards to superior spiritual realms, is in sharpest possible contrast with the passive, unconscious, weak-willed medium who, through ignorance or folly, becomes the agent for the use of any astral entity that may be attracted to the entranced body. Apollonius, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and Porphyry are examples of mediators: “but if the temple is defiled by the admission of an evil passion, thought or desire, the mediator falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is opened; the pure spirits retire and the evil ones rush in. This is still mediatorship, evil as it is; the sorcerer, like the pure magician, forms his own aura and subjects to his will congenial inferior spirits” (IU 1:487).
MEMORY. ::: Indispensable aid of the mind to preserve its past observations, the memory of the individual but also of the race.
Mentalism: Metaphysical theory of the exclusive reality of individual minds and their subjective states. The term is applied to the individualistic idealism of Berkeley and Leibniz rather than to the absolutistic Idealism of Hegel and his followers. -- L.W.
Mind-body relation: Relation obtaining between the individual mind and its body. Theories of the mind-body relation are monistic or dualistic according as they identify or separate the mind and the body. Monistic theories include: the theory of mind as bodily function, advanced by Aristotle and adhered to by thinkers as divergent as Hobbes, Hegel, and the Behaviorists, the theory of body as mental appearance held by Berkeley, Leibniz, Schopenhauer and certain other idealists, the two-aspect theory of Spinoza and of recent neutral monism which considers mind and body as manifestations of a third reality which is neither mental nor bodily. The principal dualistic theories are: two sided interacti'onism of Descartes, Locke, James and others. See Interactionism. psycho-physical parallelism. See Parallelism, Psycho-physical. Epephenomenalism. See Epephenomenalism.
Mind: (Lat. mens) Mind is used in two principal senses: (a) The individual mind is the self or subject which perceives, remembers, imagines,feels, conceives, reasons, wills, etc. and which is functionally related to an individual bodily organism. (b) Mind, generically considered, is a metaphysical substance which pervades all individual minds and which is contrasted with matter or material substance. -- L.W.
Moment of Choice The turning point in evolution, when the temporary balance between spirit and matter, or between upward and downward movements, has been reached. The evolving entity can then no longer remain neutral and undecided, but must choose definitely whether to continue upward or to enter upon a downward path. When the movement towards pralaya prevails, all the classes of evolving beings gravitate to their appropriate sphere: spirit to spirit, matter to matter, manas to mahat. But this dividing of the ways occurs for self-conscious entities at every step of the path, so that in this sense the moment of choice is continuous. Although this moment of choice is continuous for the individual, yet a point occurs in human evolution when the decision must definitely be made to follow the upward path or to follow the matter side of evolution. There is also the choice that must be made when the individual has reached the peak of human evolution on this globe, when the decision is finally to be made whether he will follow the path of the Buddhas of Compassion, or pursue the way of self and become a Pratyeka Buddha.
More particularly the brain may be described as the organ of the lower manasic activities through the manasic fluid flowing forth from the inner constitution; whereas the heart is the organ — as yet only slightly evolved to its high purposes — for the buddhic or buddhi-manasic parts of the invisible human constitution. Thus when the brain is trained to receive the inflow of the current arising in the higher portion of the fluid which bathes the heart, then the individual lives for the time at least in the highest portions of his constitution, and temporarily becomes a demigod on earth.
Mortal mind: In Christian Science, “that self-contradictory consciousness with which the individual mortal man identifies himself, unless by education and religious craving for metaphysical completeness he recognizes its fallacious character. It has a certain resemblance to Maya (q.v.). Christian Science explains that mortal mind consciousness is an erroneous point of view, and asserts that all imperfection, evil, physical objectivity seen as matter, are misrepresentations of a metaphysically perfect universe. Mortal mind stands in opposition to the ethical nature of the metaphysical universe.” (H. W. Steiger.)
mukti ::: liberation, "the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature"; in pūrn.a yoga, "a liberation of the soul in nature perfect and self-existent whether in action or in inaction"; the second member of the siddhi catus.t.aya, integral freedom, including liberation of the spirit (essential mukti) and liberation of the nature (comprising ahaṅkara-mukti-siddhi, traigun.yasiddhi and mukti from dvandva), not only a "liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the spirit", but also a "farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience" which "fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery".
Nara ::: (in mythology) the name of a sage (see Nara-Narayan.a); (literally) Man; "the universal man acting in the individual as a human . personality"; in brahmadarsana, the vision of "the cosmic Purusha in humanity", who "is developing in the human race the power that has grown into humanity from below it and shall yet grow to supermind and spirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral self and the divine universality of his nature".
nastistical "humour, mathematics" A description of a method, thought by the programmer to be correct statistics, but which is not. An example is averaging together several averages of samples of different sizes. The correct way to do this is to average together all of the individual samples. (1997-02-12)
National Information Infrastructure "project" (NII, or "{information superhighway}") Future integrated communications in the USA. The NII will be based on a nationwide network of networks, and will supposedly allow all Americans to take advantage of the country's information, communication, and computing resources. The NII will include current and future public and private high-speed, interactive, {narrow-band} and {broadband} networks. It is the satellite, terrestrial, and wireless communications systems that deliver content to homes, businesses, and other public and private institutions. It is the information and content that flows over the infrastructure whether in the form of {databases}, the written word, a film, a piece of music, a sound recording, a picture, or computer software. It is the computers, televisions, telephones, radios, and other products that people will employ to access the infrastructure. It is the people who will provide, manage, and generate new information, and those that will help others do the same. And it is the individual Americans who will use and benefit from the NII. The NII is a term that encompasses all these components and captures the vision of a nationwide, invisible, seamless, dynamic web of transmission mechanisms, information appliances, content, and people. {(http://sunsite.unc.edu/nii/NII-Table-of-Contents.html)}. (1995-04-08)
Nephesh Hayyah (Hebrew) Nefesh Ḥayyāh [from nefesh the individualized anima or psyche + ḥayyāh a living being or thing, such as a beast or even the lower part of a human being] Also Nephesh Hhayyah. Used by Qabbalists for living soul, or the animal soul.
Nirvana(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound: nir, "out," and vana, the past participle passive of the root va, "to blow,"literallly meaning "blown out." So badly has the significance of the ancient Indian thought (and even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many years erudite European scholars were discussingwhether being "blown out" meant actual entitative annihilation or not. But the being blown out refersonly to the lower principles in man.Nirvana is a very different thing from the "heavens." Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete,untrammeled consciousness, a state of absorption in pure kosmic Being, and is the wondrous destiny ofthose who have reached superhuman knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really ispersonal-individual absorption into or rather identification with the Self -- the highest SELF. It is also thestate of the monadic entities in the period that intervenes between minor manvantaras or rounds of aplanetary chain; and more fully so between each seven-round period or Day of Brahma, and thesucceeding day or new kalpa of a planetary chain. At these last times, starting forth from the seventhsphere in the seventh round, the monadic entities will have progressed far beyond even the highest stateof devachan. Too pure and too far advanced even for such a condition as the devachanic felicity, they goto their appropriate sphere and condition, which latter is the nirvana following the end of the seventhround.Devachan and nirvana are not localities. They are states, states of the beings in those respective spiritualconditions. Devachan is the intermediate state; nirvana is the superspiritual state; and avichi, popularlycalled the lowest of the hells, is the nether pole of the spiritual condition. These three are states of beingshaving habitat in the lokas or talas, in the worlds of the kosmic egg.So far as the individual human being is concerned, the nirvanic state or condition may be attained to bygreat spiritual seers and sages, such as Gautama the Buddha, and even by men less progressed than he;because in these cases of the attaining of the nirvana even during a man's life on earth, the meaning isthat one so attaining has through evolution progressed so far along the path that all the lower personalpart of him is become thoroughly impersonalized, the personal has put on the garment of impersonality,and such a man thereafter lives in the nirvanic condition of the spiritual monad.As a concluding thought, it must be pointed out that nirvana, while the ultima thule of the perfection tobe attained by any human being, nevertheless stands less high in the estimate of mystics than thecondition of the bodhisattva. For the bodhisattva, although standing on the threshold of nirvana andseeing and understanding its ineffable glory and peace and rest, nevertheless retains his consciousness inthe worlds of men, in order to consecrate his vast faculties and powers to the service of all that is. Thebuddhas in their higher parts enter the nirvana, in other words, assume the dharmakaya state or vesture,whereas the bodhisattva assumes the nirmanakaya vesture, thereafter to become an ever-active andcompassionate and beneficent influence in the world. The buddha indeed may be said to act indirectlyand by long distance control, thus indeed helping the world diffusively or by diffusion; but thebodhisattva acts directly and positively and with a directing will in works of compassion, both for theworld and for individuals.
nirvikalpa samadhi. ::: the state of Self-absorption; transcendental awareness; a state in which all differences between the individual self and Reality cease to exist, because the distinction between knower, knowledge and known is lost; beyond all duality; the state free from ideation in which nothing is perceived
Nominalists, Nominalism [from Latin nomen name] In the 11th century, Scholastic controversy arose between the Nominalists and Realists, as to whether substantive reality should be ascribed to particulars or to universals. The Nominalists held that nothing exists but individuals, and that universals are mere names invented to express the qualities of particular things. Thus the conception “man” is a mere abstract idea, a figment of the mind, devised to express certain qualities which we have abstracted from our experience of individual men, but having no existence except as a name. The Realists, on the contrary, maintained that universals alone have substantive reality, and that they exist independently of, and prior to, the individuals, which are derivative from them or expressive of them. The controversy dates back to Aristotle’s question as to whether genera, species, and abstract nouns are real or only convenient abstractions and ways of speaking.
Of the many theological doctrines included in this philosophy, there are to be noted those of the Torah and prophecy. The Torah is considered by all philosophers divinely revealed. The Sinaitic revelation was accomplished by means of a specially created voice which uttered the commandments. The Torah is therefore immutable and is eternal. Its purpose is to train men for a good life. According to Maimonides, the Torah aims at both the improvement of the soul and of the body. The first is accomplished the second by numerous laws which regulate the by inculcating right conceptions about God, and life of the individual and society.
ontogeny ::: n. --> The history of the individual development of an organism; the history of the evolution of the germ; the development of an individual organism, -- in distinction from phylogeny, or evolution of the tribe. Called also henogenesis, henogeny.
organism ::: n. --> Organic structure; organization.
An organized being; a living body, either vegetable or animal, compozed of different organs or parts with functions which are separate, but mutually dependent, and essential to the life of the individual.
Our notion of free will is apt to be tainted with the excessive individualism of the human ego and to assume the figure of an independent will acting on its own isolated account, in a complete liberty without any determination other than its own choice and single unrelated movement. This idea ignores the fact that our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. Our total being can rise out of subjection to fact of present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence. There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line. On one line the being could feel and behave as an independent self-existence uniting itself with its own impersonal Reality; it could, so self-conceived, act with a great force, but either this action would be still within an enlarged frame of its past and present self-formation of power of Nature or else it would be the cosmic or supreme Force that acted in it and there would be no personal initiation of action, no sense therefore of individual free will but only of an impersonal cosmic or supreme Will or Energy at its work. On the other line the being would feel itself a spiritual instrument and so act as a power of the Supreme Being, limited in its workings only by the potencies of the Supernature, which are without bounds or any restriction except its own Truth and self-law, and by the Will in her. But in either case there would be, as the condition of a freedom from the control of a mechanical action of Nature-forces, a submission to a greater conscious Power or an acquiescent unity of the individual being with its intention and movement in his own and in the world’s existence.” The Life Divine
Pachcheka-yana (Pali) Pacceka-yāna [from pacceka for oneself or for the personal + yāna vehicle] Personal vehicle or personality, in contradistinction to the individuality (amita-yana); the Sanskrit is pratyeka-yana. In the sevenfold classification of the human principles, the personal ego or vehicle is a combination of the four lower principles illumined with as much of manas as the lower quaternary is capable of receiving and retaining.
Parallelism, psychophysical: (Cr parallelos, from para, beside -- allelon, of one another). A dualistic solution of the mind body problem (see Mind-body relation) which asserts, in its extreme form, a perfect one-to-one correlation between the system of physical events in nature and the system of psychical events in mind. In its more moderate and restricted form, parallelism asserts only a correlation between all psychoses (mental events in an individual mind) and all or some neuroses (neural events in the individual's body). Thus there may exist physico-chemical and even neural processes in the body having no psychical correlates The term parallelism was introduced by Fechner (Zend-Avesta, Bk III, ch XIX, D) but the doctrine appeared in Spinoza (Ethics, Bk II, prop. 7 schol. and props. 11 and 12) -- L.W.
Path, The ::: Universal nature, our great parent, exists inseparably in each one of us, in each entity everywhere, and noseparation of the part from the whole, of the individual from the kosmos, is possible in any other than apurely illusory sense. This points out to us with unerring definiteness and also directs us to the sublimepath to utter reality. It is the path inwards, ever onwards within, which is endless and which leads intovast inner realms of wisdom and knowledge; for, as all the great world philosophies tell us so truly, ifyou know yourself you then know the universe, because each one of you is an inseparable part of it and itis all in you, its child.It is obvious from this last reflection that the sole essential difference between any two grades of theevolving entities which infill and compose the kosmos is a difference of consciousness, of understanding;and this consciousness and understanding come to the evolving entity in only one way -- by unwrappingor unfolding the intrinsic faculties or powers of that entity's own inner being. This is the path, as themystics of all ages have put it.The pathway is within yourself. There is no other pathway for you individually than the pathway leadingever inwards towards your own inner god. The pathway of another is the same pathway for that other;but it is not your pathway, because your pathway is your Self, as it is for that other one his Self -- andyet, wonder of wonders, mystery of mysteries, the Self is the same in all. All tread the same pathway, buteach man must tread it himself, and no one can tread it for another; and this pathway leads to unutterablesplendor, to unutterable expansion of consciousness, to unthinkable bliss, to perfect peace.
Personality ::: Theosophists draw a clear and sharp distinction, not of essence but of quality, between personality andindividuality. Personality comes from the Latin word persona, which means a mask, through which theactor, the spiritual individuality, speaks. The personality is all the lower man: all the psychical and astraland physical impulses and thoughts and tendencies, and what not. It is the reflection in matter of theindividuality; but being a material thing it can lead us downwards, although it is in essence a reflection ofthe highest. Freeing ourselves from the domination of the person, the mask, the veil, through which theindividuality acts, then we show forth all the spiritual and so-called superhuman qualities; and this willhappen in the future, in the far distant aeons of the future, when every human being shall have become abuddha, a christ. Such is the destiny of the human race.In occultism the distinction between the personality and the immortal individuality is that drawn betweenthe lower quaternary or four lower principles of the human constitution and the three higher principles ofthe constitution or higher triad. The higher triad is the individuality; the personality is the lowerquaternary. The combination of these two into a unity during a lifetime on earth produces what we nowcall the human being. The personality comprises within its range all the characteristics and memories andimpulses and karmic attributes of one physical life; whereas the individuality is the aeonic ego,imperishable and deathless for the period of a solar manvantara. It is the individuality through its ray orhuman astral-vital monad which reincarnates time after time and thus clothes itself in one personalityafter another personality.
Perspective: (Lat. perspectus pp. of pelspicio, to look through) The determination of inclusiveness of what can be actual for any organization. The point of view of an individual on the rest of existence. (a) In epistemology: the perspective predicament, the limited though real viewpoint of the individual, the plight of being confined to the experience of only part of actuality. (b) In psychology: the perception of relative distance by means of the apparent differences in the size of objects.
Philosophy of Religion: An inquiry into the general subject of religion from the philosophical point of view, i.e., an inquiry employing the accepted tools of critical analysis and evaluation without a predisposition to defend or reject the claims of any particular religion. Among the specific questions considered are the nature, function and value of religion; the validity of the claims of religious knowledge; the relation of religion and ethics; the character of ideal religion; the nature of evil; the problem of theodicy; revealed versus natural religion; the problem of the human spirit (soul) and its destiny; the relation of the human to the divine as to the freedom and responsibility of the individual and the character (if any) of a divine purpose; evaluation of the claims of prophecy, mystic intuitions, special revelations, inspired utterances; the value of prayers of petition; the human hope of immortality; evaluation of institutional forms of expressions, rituals, creeds, ceremonies, rites, missionary propaganda; the meaning of human existence, the character of value, its status in the world of reality, the existence and character of deity; the nature of belief and faith, etc.
phylogeny ::: n. --> The history of genealogical development; the race history of an animal or vegetable type; the historic exolution of the phylon or tribe, in distinction from ontogeny, or the development of the individual organism, and from biogenesis, or life development generally.
physiogeny ::: n. --> The germ history of the functions, or the history of the development of vital activities, in the individual, being one of the branches of ontogeny. See Morphogeny.
Pietism: In general, an emphasis upon the individual appropriation of religious truth as over against its formal acceptance. As a movement, the term refers specifically to the reaction against the cold orthodoxies within German Protestantism of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Philip Spener (1635-1705) is regarded as the father of German Pietism. Under Spener's influence August Franke (1663-1727) became one of the most vigorous champions of the movement toward a more genuine Christian living. Franke was a preacher of power and founder of charitable organizations. Spener's Pia Desideria, "The Things Religiously Desired" (1675) is regarded as the Manifesto of the movement. Pietism also carries a derogatory connotation: a person is said to be "pietistic" if the seriousness of his religious practices lead him to extremes, even to the point of asceticism and fanaticism. See Puritanism. -- V.F.
Plekhanov, George Valentinovich: (1856-1918) Was a Russian Marxist who became the philosophical leader of the Menshevik faction of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, opposing Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik wing. In spite of what are regarded as his political errors, such as his support of the war of 1914-1918 and his negative attitude to the Revolution of October, 1917, contemporary Soviet thinkers regard Plekhanov's works as containing valuable expositions of Marxist philosophy. Among his writings in this field are, Our Disputes (1885), On the Problem of the Development of the Monistic View of History (1895), Essays on the History of Materilism (1896), On the Materialist Conception of History (1897), On the Problem of the Role of the Individual in History (1898).
ploce ::: n. --> A figure in which a word is separated or repeated by way of emphasis, so as not only to signify the individual thing denoted by it, but also its peculiar attribute or quality; as, "His wife&
Political Philosophy: That branch of philosophy which deals with political life, especially with the essence, origin and value of the state. In ancient philosophy politics also embraced what we call ethics. The first and most important ancient works on Political Philosophy were Plato's Politeia (Republic) and Aristotle's Politics. The Politeia outlines the structure and functions of the ideal state. It became the pattern for all the Utopias (see Utopia) of later times. Aristotle, who considers man fundamentally a social creature i.e. a political animal, created the basis for modern theories of government, especially by his distinction of the different forms of government. Early Christianity had a rather negative attitude towards the state which found expression in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei. The influence of this work, in which the earthly state was declared to be civitas diaboli, a state of the devil, was predominant throughout the Middle Ages. In the discussion of the relation between church and empire, the main topic of medieval political philosophy, certain authors foreshadowed modern political theories. Thomas Aquinas stressed the popular origin of royal power and the right of the people to restrict or abolish that power in case of abuse; William of Ockham and Marsiglio of Padua held similar views. Dante Alighieri was one of the first to recognize the intrinsic value of the state; he considered the world monarchy to be the only means whereby peace, justice and liberty could be secured. But it was not until the Renaissance that, due to the rediscovery of the individual and his rights and to the formation of territorial states, political philosophy began to play a major role. Niccolo Machiavelli and Jean Bodin laid the foundation for the new theories of the state by stressing its independence from any external power and its indivisible sovereignty. The theory of popular rights and of the right of resistance against tyranny was especially advocated by the "Monarchomachi" (Huguenots, such as Beza, Hotman, Languet, Danaeus, Catholics such as Boucher, Rossaeus, Mariana). Most of them used the theory of an original contract (see Social Contract) to justify limitations of monarchical power. Later, the idea of a Natural Law, independent from divine revelation (Hugo Grotius and his followers), served as an argument for liberal -- sometimes revolutionary -- tendencies. With the exception of Hobbes, who used the contract theory in his plea for absolutism, almost all the publicists of the 16th and 17th century built their liberal theories upon the idea of an original covenant by which individuals joined together and by mutual consent formed a state and placed a fiduciary trust in the supreme power (Roger Williams and John Locke). It was this contract which the Pilgrim Fathers translated into actual facts, after their arrival in America, in November, 1620, long before John Locke had developed his theorv. In the course of the 17th century in England the contract theory was generally substituted for the theory of the divine rights of kings. It was supported by the assumption of an original "State of Nature" in which all men enjoyed equal reciprocal rights. The most ardent defender of the social contract theory in the 18th century was J. J. Rousseau who deeply influenced the philosophy of the French revolution. In Rousseau's conception the idea of the sovereignty of the people took on a more democratic aspect than in 17th century English political philosophy which had been almost exclusively aristocratic in its spirit. This tendency found expression in his concept of the "general will" in the moulding of which each individual has his share. Immanuel Kant who made these concepts the basis of his political philosophy, recognized more clearly than Rousseau the fictitious character of the social contract and treated it as a "regulative idea", meant to serve as a criterion in the evaluation of any act of the state. For Hegel the state is an end in itself, the supreme realization of reason and morality. In marked opposition to this point of view, Marx and Engels, though strongly influenced by Hegel, visualized a society in which the state would gradually fade away. Most of the 19th century publicists, however, upheld the juristic theory of the state. To them the state was the only source of law and at the same time invested with absolute sovereignty: there are no limits to the legal omnipotence of the state except those which are self imposed. In opposition to this doctrine of unified state authority, a pluralistic theory of sovereignty has been advanced recently by certain authors, laying emphasis upon corporate personalities and professional groups (Duguit, Krabbe, Laski). Outspoken anti-stateism was advocated by anarchists such as Kropotkin, etc., by syndicalists and Guild socialists. -- W.E.
polyzoon ::: n. --> One of the individual zooids forming the compound organism of a polyzoan.
porpita ::: n. --> A genus of bright-colored Siphonophora found floating in the warmer parts of the ocean. The individuals are round and disk-shaped, with a large zooid in the center of the under side, surrounded by smaller nutritive and reproductive zooids, and by slender dactylozooids near the margin. The disk contains a central float, or pneumatocyst.
posa ::: increase; the growth of all possessions internal or external in the life of the individual. [Ved.]
Potentiality: See Dynamis. Power: In general: the physical, mental and moral ability to act or to receive an action; the general faculty of doing, making, performing, realizing, achieving, producing or succeeding; ability, capacity, virtue, virtuality, potency, potentiality, faculty, efficacy, efficacity, efficiency, operative causality, process of change or becoming; natural operative force, energy, vigor, strength, or effective condition applied or applicable to work; person, agent, body, institution, government or state, having or exercising an ability to act in accordance with its nature and functions; spirit, divinity, deity, superhuman agent, supernatural principle of activity; an attribute or name of God; in theology, an order of angels; in law the authority, capacity or right to exercise certain natural and legal prerogatives, also, the authority vestcd in a person by law; influence, prerogative, force. A. In psychology, power is sometimes synonymous with faculty (q.v.). It also means a quality which renders the nature of an individual agent apt to elicit certain physical and moral actions. Hence, power is a natural endowment enabling the intellect to condition the will and thus create hibits and virtues, in a higher degree, power is a moral disposition enabling the individual to cultivate his perfectibility. The distinction between powers is given by the distinction of their actions. Powers are acthe or operative, and passive or receptive; they are immediate or remote. Even impotence and incapacity are not different in kind from power, but simply in degree. These Aristotelian views on power, including its ontological interpretation, have held the ground for centuries, and we find them partly also in Hobbes and Locke who defined power as the ability to make or to receive change. Hume's analysis of power showed it to be an illusion; and with the advent of positivism and experimental psychology, this concept lost much of its value. The notion of power has been used by Fechner in his doctrine and law concerning the relation between stimuli and sensations.
Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us. the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it and hold it, because pro- founder and more intimately neat to the Identical and Absolute than the surface activities of our thought powers To know that will in ourselves and in the universe and follow it to its divine
power ::: “Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” Letters on Yoga
power ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
Pragmatism is first and always a doctrine of meaning, and often a definition of truth as well, but as to the latter, not all pragmatists are in complete agreement. Neither Peirce nor Dewey, for example, would accept James' view that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily for the individual, it is true. Pragmatism is also a method of interpreting ideas in terms of their consequences. James, however, apparently does not believe that this method entails his specific philosophical doctrines -- his pluralism, individualism, neutralism, indeterminism, meliorism, pragmatic theism, "crass" supernaturalism, etc. In fact, he states that pragmatism is independent of his new philosophy of "radical empiricism" and agrees with the anti-intellectualist bent of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, who sees the pragmatic method available to the atheist, the praying penitent, the investigating chemist, the metaphysician and the anti-metaphysician ("What Pragmatism Means".) On the other hand, insofar as pragmatism is practically identified with the scientific method (as is allegedly the case with Dewey) it appears that the pragmatic method might be expected to yield much the same conclusions for one philosopher as for another. In general, pragmatism as a method, does not seem to imply any final philosophical conclusions. It may imply a general direction of thought, such as empiricism. Although pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) frequently attack older forms of empiricism, or crude empiricism, and necessarily reject truth as a simple or static correspondence of propositions with sense data, they nevertheless continue to describe themselves as empiricists, so that today pragmatism (especially in Dewey's case) is often regarded as synonymous with empiricism. See Empiricism.
prakr.ti-jiva (prakriti-jiva) ::: the individual soul (jiva) realising itself prakrti-jiva as a manifestation of prakr.ti or universal Nature; see jiva-prakr.ti. prakr.tiṁ yanti bhūtani nigrahah. kiṁ karis.yati (prakritim yanti prakrtim
pralaya ::: 1. the end of a cycle of aeons; temporary disintegration of a universal form of existence and all the individual forms which move in its rounds. ::: 2. physical death.
Pralaya(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word, formed of laya, from the root li, and the prefix pra. Li means "to dissolve,""to melt away," "to liquefy," as when one pours water upon a cube of salt or of sugar. The cube of salt orof sugar vanishes in the water -- it dissolves, changes its form -- and this may be taken as a figure,imperfect as it is, or as a symbol, of what pralaya is: a crumbling away, a vanishing away, of matter intosomething else which is yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. Such is pralaya, usuallytranslated as the state of latency, state of rest, state of repose, between two manvantaras or life cycles. Ifwe remember distinctly the meaning of the Sanskrit word, our minds take a new bent in direction, followa new thought. We get new ideas; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that takes place. Pralaya,therefore, is dissolution, death.There are many kinds of pralayas. There is the universal pralaya, called prakritika, because it is thepralaya or vanishing away, melting away, of prakriti or nature. Then there is the solar pralaya. Sun inSanskrit is surya, and the adjective from this is saurya: hence, the saurya pralaya or the pralaya of thesolar system. Then, thirdly, there is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. One Sanskrit word for earth isbhumi, and the adjective corresponding to this is bhaumika: hence, the bhaumika pralaya. Then there isthe pralaya or death of the individual man. Man is purusha; the corresponding adjective is paurusha:hence, the paurusha pralaya or death of man. These adjectives apply equally well to the several kinds ofmanvantaras or life cycles.There is another kind of pralaya which is called nitya. In its general sense, it means "constant" or"continuous," and can be exemplified by the constant or continuous change -- life and death -- of the cellsof our bodies. It is a state in which the indwelling and dominating entity remains, but its differentprinciples and rupas undergo continuous and incessant change. Hence it is called nitya, signifyingcontinuous. It applies to the body of man, to the outer sphere of earth, to the earth itself, to the solarsystem, and indeed to all nature. It is the unceasing and chronic changing of things that are -- the passingfrom phase to phase, meaning the pralaya or death of one phase, to be followed by the rebirth of itssucceeding phase. There are other kinds of pralayas than those herein enumerated.
Prana(Sanskrit) ::: The word is derived from pra, prepositional prefix meaning "before"; and an, verb meaning"to breathe," "to blow," "to live." Usually translated "life," but rather the psychoelectrical veil orpsychoelectrical field manifesting in the individual as vitality. Commonly called "life principle." ThisSanskrit word is used by modern theosophists in a general sense, although in the Sanskrit it has a ratherspecific and restricted meaning, because there are, as a matter of fact, a number of life currents, vitalfluids. They have each one its own name. One system gives the number as three; another as five, which isthe commonly accepted number; another enumeration is seven; another again is twelve, as is found insome Upanishads; and one old writer even gives them as thirteen.The life-atoms of the prana, or psychoelectrical field, fly instantly back at the moment of physicaldissolution to the natural pranic reservoirs of the planet.
PRAYER. ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and therefore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudi- ties there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which ima- gines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flat- tered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little te^td to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essen- tial movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth.
The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that, being omniscient, his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least, human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes, -and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used, -- or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way, again, may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded, yogaksemam vahamyaham. ~ TSOY, SYN
Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is (here consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the givinc of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man’s life with God, the conscious interchange.
In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily, in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, -- in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there, -- or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
Prayer for others ::: The fact of praying and the attitude it brings, especially unselfish prayer for others, itself opens you to the higher Power, even if there is no corresponding result in the person prayed for. 'Nothing can be positively said about that, for the result must necessarily depend on the persons, whe- ther they arc open or receptive or something in them can res- pond to any Force the prayer brings down.
Prayer must well up from the heart on a crest of emotion or aspiration.
Prayer {Ideal)'. Not prayer insisting on immediate fulfilment, but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and heart with the Divine*and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulfilment by the Divine in his own time.
Prayer ::: The life of man is a life of wants and needs and th
refore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudities there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which imagines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flattered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little regard to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essential movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth. The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or higher purposes,—and there are plenty of disciplines which put it forward as the one force to be used,—or it can act in dependence upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this latter way again may either look upon thatWill as responsive indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded. Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is there consistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man’s life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, —in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there,—or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the artha or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 566-67-68
Principium individuationis: (Lat.) Principle of individuation (q.v.); the intrinsic, real factor in an existing singular thing which causes the individuality of the thing. -- V.J.B.
Process of Yoga ::: The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 58
prophecy ::: “If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past.
Psj'chic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation of the indiridnal Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and phyrical as the psychic being until
psychic being ::: the evolving soul of the individual, the divine portion in him which evolves from life to life, growing by its experiences until it becomes a fully conscious being. From its place behind the heart-centre, the psychic being supports the mind, life and body, aiding their growth and development. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being", but strictly speaking there is a distinction: the soul is the psychic essence, the psychic being is the soul-personality put forward and developed by the psychic essence to represent it in the evolution. ::: See also psychic.
psychic essence ::: the soul in its essence; the divine essence in the individual, the divine spark which supports the evolution of the being in Nature. In the course of the evolution the psychic essence grows and takes form as the psychic being.
Psychic Summation: See Psychic Fusion. Psycho-analysis: The psychological method and therapeutic technique developed by Freud (see Freud, Sigmund). This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten memories, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life of an individual. The cure of the psychic disturbances is effected by bringing the suppressed items into the full of consciousness of the individual. Psycho-analytic theory has posited a subconscious mind as a repository for the suppressed elements. Freud exaggerated the sexual origin of the suppressed desires but other psycho-analysts, notably Jung and Adler, corrected this exaggeration. The psycho-analytical school has developed its terminology in which the following are characteristic. Free association is the method of encouraging the patient to recall in random fashion experiences, particularly of childhood. A "complex" is a more or less permanent emotional system or mechjnism responsible for the mental disturbances of the patient. Libido designates the underlying sexual drive or impulse, the suppression of which is responsible for the psychic disturbance. Suppression or repression is the rejection from consciousness of desires and urges which it finds intolerable. Sublimation is the transference of a suppressed desire to a new object. These terms are only a few samples of the elaborate and at times highly mythological terminology of psycho-analysis. -- L.W.
psychism ::: n. --> The doctrine of Quesne, that there is a fluid universally diffused, end equally animating all living beings, the difference in their actions being due to the difference of the individual organizations.
Psychoanalysis ::: Developed by Sigmund Freud, this type of therapy is known for long term treatment, typically several times per week, where the unresolved issues from the individual&
Psychoanalysis: The system and school of psychotherapy originated by Sigmund Freud. This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten events, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life of an individual. The cure of the psychic disturbances is effected by bringing the suppressed items into the full consciousness of the individual.
quadrants ::: As in the four quadrants, which represent four basic dimensions of all individual holons: the interior and exterior of the individual and collective. These are designated as the Upper Left (interior-individual), Upper Right (exterior-individual), Lower Left (interiorcollective), and Lower Right (exterior-collective). The quadrants correspond with “I,” “We,” “It,” and “Its,” which are often summarized as the Big Three: “I,” “We,” and “It/s.” The Big Three are correlated with, although not identical to, the value spheres of Art, Morals, and Science, and with Plato’s value judgments of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The 8 zones refer to the inside and outside of the four quadrants.
Raja yoga ::: This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts th
refore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 36-37
REBIRTH. ::: If evolution is a truth and is not only a physi- cal evolution of species, but an evolution of consciousness, it must be a spiritual and not only a physical fact. In that case, it is the individual who evolves and grows into a more and more developed and perfect consciousness and obviously that cannot be done in the course of a brief single human life. If there is the evolution of a conscious individual, then there must be rebirth. Rebirth is a logical necessity and a spiritual fact of which we can have the experience.
Recognizing the essential oneness of the individual with the universe, not only spiritually but on all planes, the student of occultism strives for the subordination of the personal self as an individual to the common good of all mankind, and indeed of all things that are. With this training, the student in time comes keenly to realize that there is no longer a moral obligation lying upon him to subject his personal wish to the common good, but that this subordination becomes the first joyful duty of all his life. In this manner spiritual powers, faculties, and attributes are gained, as well as intellectual expansion that, when more or less complete, combine to make the full adept or initiate. A master of wisdom is one who has developed an individual consciousness of his oneness with the Boundless, and this is the very foundation of the ethics of theosophy.
reconcile ::: “True reconciliation proceeds always by a mutual comprehension leading to some sort of intimate oneness. It is therefore through the utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence.” The Life Divine
Res cogitans: Latin for thinking thing. Descartes’ designation for thinking substance which along with extended substance (res extensa) constitute his dualism. The term presumably designates not only the individual mind which thinks but also the substance which pervades all individual minds.
Res Cogitans: (Lat res, thing + cogitans from cogitare, to think) Descartes' designation for thinking substance which along with extended substance (res extensa) constitute his dualism. The term presumably designates not only the individual mind which thinks but also the substance which pervades all individual minds. -- L.W.
Right-Hand path ::: The approaches or methodologies that rely on the exterior of the individual and collective, or the Upper- and Lower-Right quadrants.
Rosicrucian Order (Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis—A.M.O.R.C.): Defined by the Rosicrucian Order itself as “a world-wide fraternal organization, established and operating on a lodge system. It expounds a system of metaphysical and physical philosophy intended to awaken the dormant, latent faculties of the individual whereby he may utilize to a better advantage his natural talents and lead a happier and more useful life. It accomplishes this by a method of personal instruction and guidance.” The word Rosicrucian is derived from the Latin Rosae Crucis, meaning of the Rosy Cross; the traditional symbol of the order is a cross with a single red rose in the center. The Order has its traditional origin in the Great White Brotherhood of Egypt (15th century B.C.).
sahasradala (sahasradala; sahasradal) ::: the "thousand-petalled lotus"; the cakra above the head which is "the centre of communication direct between the individual being and the infinite Consciousness above".
Samadhi: Sanskrit for putting together. Profound meditation, absorption in the spirit. The final stage in the practice of Yoga, in which the individual becomes one with the object of meditation, thus attaining a condition of superconsciousness and unqualified blissfulness, which is called moksha.
samsara. ::: repetitive history; worldly bondage; earthly suffering; the continuous round of birth and death to which the individual is subjected until it attains liberation; earthly suffering
sarcina ::: n. --> A genus of bacteria found in various organic fluids, especially in those those of the stomach, associated with certain diseases. The individual organisms undergo division along two perpendicular partitions, so that multiplication takes place in two directions, giving groups of four cubical cells. Also used adjectively; as, a sarcina micrococcus; a sarcina group.
Sayr al-Anfusi ::: The recognition of the individual realities or the path of the inward journey.
sayujya ::: contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine.
sayujyamukti ::: [liberation by] self-oblivious abolition of the soul's personal being in the absorption in the One; the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine.
self ::: a. --> Same; particular; very; identical. ::: n. --> The individual as the object of his own reflective consciousness; the man viewed by his own cognition as the subject of all his mental phenomena, the agent in his own activities, the subject of his own feelings, and the possessor of capacities and character; a
Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger, deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The con- centration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psy- chic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the conscious- ness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and
Self can be experienced as the self of the individual.
self-knowledge ::: knowing of oneself, without help from another.
Sri Aurobindo: The possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity is coming slowly to be admitted in modern Psychology, like the possibility of more elastic instruments of knowledge, although still classified, even when its value and power are admitted, as a hallucination. In the psychology of the East it has always been recognised as a reality and the aim of our subjective progress. The essence of the passage over to this goal is the exceeding of the limits imposed on us by the ego-sense and at least a partaking, at most an identification with the self-knowledge which broods secret in all life and in all that seems to us inanimate. *The Life Divine
"Therefore the only final goal possible is the emergence of the infinite consciousness in the individual; it is his recovery of the truth of himself by self-knowledge and by self-realisation, the truth of the Infinite in being, the Infinite in consciousness, the Infinite in delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression.” The Life Divine
"The Truth-Consciousness is everywhere present in the universe as an ordering self-knowledge by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity.” The Life Divine
Service Access Point "networking" (SAP) The {OSI} term for the component of a network address which identifies the individual application on a host which is sending or receiving a {packet}. {TCP/IP}'s equivalent term is "{port}". Different SAPs distinguish between different services or applications on a host, e.g. {electronic mail}, {FTP}, {HTTP}. (1996-12-23)
Simmel, Georg: (1858-1918) Occupying himself mostly with the reciprocal effects between individuals, he practically ignored the pioblem of the individual to the group. Calling attention to the psychical interactions as constituting the real foundation of community life, he stressed the reciprocity of relations. As alleged founder of the "formalistic" sociology, he regards the forms of socialization, the kinds of interactions of individuals upon each other as the distinctive subject of sociology. He defended in his earlier years a descriptive and relative, as opposed to a normative, absolutistic ethics. Subscribing to a metaphysics of life, he characterizes life as ceaseless self-transcendence. -- H.H.
&
Social Psychology ::: The branch of psychology which focuses on society and it&
Solipsism: The metaphysical doctrine that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self and have no independent existence.
SOUL. ::: Soul is something of the Divine that descends into evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the IgnoraR<% into the Light. It deve- lops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments, it is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates ; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolu- tion of the individual.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Soul-Substance Theory: Theory that the unity of the individual mind is constituted by a single, permanent, and indivisible spiritual substance. (See Ego, Pure) The theory is usually combined with a faculty psychology. See Faculty Psychology. -- L.W.
soul ::: the psychic essence or entity, the divine essence in the individual; a spark of the Divine that comes down into the manifestation to support the evolution of the individual. In the course of the evolution, the soul grows and evolves in the form of a soul-personality, the psychic being. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being."
spam 1. "messaging" (From Hormel's Spiced Ham, via the Monty Python "Spam" song) To post irrelevant or inappropriate messages to one or more {Usenet} {newsgroups}, {mailing lists}, or other messaging system in deliberate or accidental violation of {netiquette}. It is possible to spam a newsgroup with one well- (or ill-) planned message, e.g. asking "What do you think of abortion?" on soc.women. This can be done by {cross-post}ing, e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups. (Compare {troll} and {flame bait}). Posting a message to a significant proportion of all newsgroups is a sure way to spam Usenet and become an object of almost universal hatred. Canter and Siegel spammed the net with their Green card post. If you see an article which you think is a deliberate spam, DO NOT post a {follow-up} - doing so will only contribute to the general annoyance. Send a polite message to the poster by private e-mail and CC it to "postmaster" at the same address. Bear in mind that the posting's origin might have been forged or the apparent sender's account might have been used by someone else without his permission. The word was coined as the winning entry in a 1937 competition to choose a name for Hormel Foods Corporation's "spiced meat" (now officially known as "SPAM luncheon meat"). Correspondant Bob White claims the modern use of the term predates Monty Python by at least ten years. He cites an editor for the Dallas Times Herald describing Public Relations as "throwing a can of spam into an electric fan just to see if any of it would stick to the unwary passersby." {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:news.admin.net-abuse}. See also {netiquette}. 2. (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To indiscriminately send large amounts of unsolicited {e-mail} meant to promote a product or service. Spam in this sense is sort of like the electronic equivalent of junk mail sent to "Occupant". In the 1990s, with the rise in commercial awareness of the net, there are actually scumbags who offer spamming as a "service" to companies wishing to advertise on the net. They do this by mailing to collections of {e-mail} addresses, Usenet news, or mailing lists. Such practises have caused outrage and aggressive reaction by many net users against the individuals concerned. 3. (Apparently a generalisation of sense 2, above) To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional purposes. "AltaVista is an {index}, not a promotional tool. Attempts to fill it with promotional material lower the value of the index for everyone. [...] We will disallow {URL} submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will exclude all their pages from the index." -- {Altavista}. 4. "jargon, programming" To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size {buffer} with excessively large input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}. 5. "chat, games" (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To flood any {chat} forum or {Internet game} with purposefully annoying text or macros. Compare {Scrolling}. (2003-09-21)
SPEC CFP92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} suite from {SPEC} containing 14 programs performing {floating-point} computations. 12 are written in {Fortran} and two in {C}. They can be used to estimate the performance of CPU, memory system, and compiler code generation. The individual programs are Circuit Design, Simulation (2x), Quantum Chemistry (3x), Electromagnetism, Geometric Translation, Optics, Robotics, Medical Simulation, Quantum Physics, Astrophysics, NASA Kernels. The benchmark suite can be used either for speed measurement, resulting in {SPEC ratios}, or for throughput measurement, resulting in {SPEC rates} (1994-11-15)
SPEC CINT92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} suite from {SPEC}, which contains six benchmarks in {C} performing integer computations. They can be used to estimate the performance of CPU, memory system, and compiler code generation. The individual programs are Logic Design (2x), Interpreter, Data Compression, Spreadsheet. The approximate size of the suite is 85500 lines of source code without comments. The benchmark suite can be used either for speed measurement, resulting in {SPEC ratios}, or for throughput measurement, resulting in {SPEC rates} (1994-11-15)
SPEC rate "benchmark" Results of the throughput measurement using {SPEC} {benchmark} suites {CINT92} and {CFP92}. With the throughput measurement method, several copies of a given benchmark are executed. The method is particularly suitable for {multiprocessor} systems. The results, called SPEC rate, express how many jobs of a particular type (characterised by the individual benchmark) can be executed in a given time (The SPEC reference time happens to be a week, the execution times are normalized with respect to a {VAX 11/780}). The SPEC rates therefore characterise the capacity of a system for compute-intensive jobs of similar characteristics. See also {SPEC ratio}. (1994-11-14)
Spirit ::: In the theosophical philosophy there is a distinct and important difference in the use of the words spiritand soul. The spirit is the immortal element in us, the deathless flame within us which dies never, whichnever was born and which retains throughout the entire maha-manvantara its own quality, essence, andlife, sending down into our own being and into our various planes certain of its rays or garments or soulswhich we are.The divine spirit of man is linked with the All, being in a highly mystical sense a ray of the All.A soul is an entity which is evolved by experiences; it is not a spirit because it is a vehicle of a spirit. Itmanifests in matter through and by being a substantial portion of the lower essence of the spirit.Touching another plane below it, or it may be above it, the point of union allowing ingress and egress tothe consciousness is a laya-center. The spirit manifests in seven vehicles, and each one of these vehiclesis a soul; and that particular point through which the spiritual influence passes in the soul is thelaya-center, the heart of the soul, or rather the summit thereof -- homogeneous soul-substance, if youlike.In a kosmical sense spirit should be applied only to that which belongs without qualifications to universalconsciousness and which is the homogeneous and unmixed emanation from the universal consciousness.In the case of man, the spirit within man is the flame of his deathless ego, the direct emanation of thespiritual monad within him, and of this ego the spiritual soul is the enclosing sheath or vehicle orgarment. Making an application more particularly and specifically to the human principles, when thehigher manas of man which is his real ego is indissolubly linked with buddhi, this, in fact, is the spiritualego or spirit of the individual human being's constitution. Its life term before the emanation is withdrawninto the divine monad is for the full period of a kosmic manvantara.
Spiritual Soul ::: The spiritual soul is the vehicle of the individual monad, the jivatman or spiritual ego; in the case ofman's principles it is essentially of the nature of atma-buddhi. This spiritual ego is the center or seed orroot of the reincarnating ego. It is that portion of our spiritual constitution which is deathless as anindividualized entity -- deathless until the end of the maha-manvantara of the cosmic solar system.The spiritual soul and the divine soul, or atman, combined, are the inner god -- the inner buddha, theinner christ.
Sri Aurobindo: "But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . for each individual is in himself the Eternal who has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life turning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective cause of rebirth and by the mind"s turning away from the knowledge of the eternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance — when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one"s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "True reconciliation proceeds always by a mutual comprehension leading to some sort of intimate oneness. It is therefore through the utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence.” The Life Divine*
Stem and Leaf Display ::: A multiple column table depicting the individual digits of the scores. A score of 95 would have a stem of 9 and a leaf of 5, a score of 62 would have a stem of 6 and a leaf of 2. If a particular stem has more than one leaf, such as the scores 54, 58, and 51, the stem of 5 has three leaves, in this case 458.
Stirner, Max: Pen name of Johann Caspar Schmidt (1806-1856) Most extreme and thoroughgoing individualist in the history of philosophy. In his classic, The Ego and his Own, he regards everything except the individual as minor; family, state and society all disappear before the individual, the ego, as the primary power for life and living. -- L.E.D.
STRUGGLE. ::: There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light.
subconscient (the) ::: the subconscient or subconscious of the individual is that submerged part of his being in which there is no waking conscious and coherent thought, will, feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up; from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements can surge up into dream or into the waking state. In the ordinary man the subconscient includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and the secret body-consciousness. It is not to be confused with the subliminal: the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence.
subheccha. ::: good desire for enlightenment; longing for the Truth; noble wish or desire which arises in the heart of one who aspires to cross samsara; when the individual having come to the consciousness of the evils of the earthly living aspires to transcend it; the first stage in the path of Self-knowledge
Substance Theory of Mind: The conception of the individual mind as a permanent, self-identical substance. (See Soul-Substance Theory). The Substance Theory is distinguished from the substantive theory by C. W. Morris, (Six Theories of Mind, Chs. I and V) but the distinction is difficult to maintain. -- L.W.
Subsumption: Noun signifying that the subject of a proposition is taken under the predicate. Also the inclusion of the species under the genus, and the individual under the species. The minor premiss which applies a general law stated by the major premiss of a syllogism is called a subsumption. -- J.J.R.
suffering ::: “ Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance—when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one’s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” Letters on Yoga
sunyabhava. :::thought-free state of emptiness; the state where the individual is only aware of his conscious being while everything else is like a void, without existence
Sutratman(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word meaning "thread-self," the golden thread of individuality -- the stream ofself-consciousness -- on which all the substance-principles of man's constitution are strung, so to say, likepearls on a golden chain. The sutratman is the stream of consciousness-life running through all thevarious substance-principles of the constitution of the human entity -- or indeed of any other entity. Eachsuch pearl on the golden chain is one of the countless personalities which man uses during the course ofhis manvantara-long evolutionary progress. The sutratman, therefore, may be briefly said to be theimmortal or spiritual monadic ego, the individuality which incarnates in life after life, and therefore isrightly called the thread-self or fundamental self.It is this sutratman, this thread-self, this consciousness-stream, or rather stream of consciousness-life,which is the fundamental and individual selfhood of every entity, and which, reflected in and through theseveral intermediate vehicles or veils or sheaths or garments of the invisible constitution of man, or ofany other being in which a monad enshrouds itself, produces the egoic centers of self-consciousexistence. The sutratman, therefore, is rooted in the monad, the monadic essence.
Svabhavat(Sanskrit) ::: The neuter present participle of a compound word derived from the verb-root bhu, meaning "tobecome," from which is derived a secondary meaning "to be," in the sense of growth.Svabhavat is a state or condition of cosmic consciousnesssubstance, where spirit and matter, which arefundamentally one, no longer are dual as in manifestation, but one: that which is neither manifestedmatter nor manifested spirit alone, but both are the primeval unity -- spiritual akasa -- where mattermerges into spirit, and both now being really one, are called "Father-Mother," spirit-substance.Svabhavat never descends from its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but is the cosmicreservoir of being, as well as of beings, therefore of consciousness, of intellectual light, of life; and it isthe ultimate source of what science, in our day, so quaintly calls the energies of nature universal.The northern Buddhists call svabhavat by a more mystical term, Adi-buddhi, "primeval buddhi"; theBrahmanical scriptures call it akasa; and the Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the cosmic "waters."The difference in meaning between svabhavat and svabhava is very great and is not generallyunderstood; the two words often have been confused. Svabhava is the characteristic nature, thetype-essence, the individuality, of svabhavat -- of any svabhavat, each such svabhavat having its ownsvabhava. Svabhavat, therefore, is really the world-substance or stuff, or still more accurately that whichis causal of the world-substance, and this causal principle or element is the spirit and essence of cosmicsubstance. It is the plastic essence of matter, both manifest and unmanifest. (See also Akasa)
tapas ::: "concentration of power of consciousness"; will-power; the force that acts through aisvarya, isita and vasita, or the combination of these siddhis of power themselves, sometimes listed as the fourth of five members of the vijñana catus.t.aya; the divine force of action into which rajas is transformed in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, a power "which has no desire because it exercises a universal possession and a spontaneous Ananda .. of its movements"; the force manifested by an aspect of daivi prakr.ti (see Mahakali tapas, Mahasarasvati tapas); (also called cit-tapas)"infinite conscious energy", the principle that is the basis of tapoloka; limited mental will and power. Tapas is "the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. . . . But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, . . . that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining". tapas ananda
Te: Virtue; power, character; efficacy --The Individual Principle, Tao particularized or inherent in a thing, the "abode of Tao," through "the obtaining of which" a thing becomes what it is. Virtue, moral character, "that which obtains in a person;" "that which is sufficient in the self without depending on any external help," referring particularly to benevolence and righteousness which are natural to man (Hin Yu, 767-824 A.D.). Kindness. Techne: (Gr. techne) The set of principles, or rational method, involved in the production of an object or the accomplishment of an end; the knowledge of such principles or method; art. Techne resembles episteme in implying knowledge of principles, but differs in that its aim is making or doing, not disinterested understanding. -- G.R.M.
That the child carries on or transmits many features from his parents cannot be denied, but it is of no greater significance than the fact that he also derives features from a variety of other sources, all which contribute materials and subordinate agents by which the karma of the individual is fulfilled. That karma is the innate character of the individual, as imbodied in the various spiritual, manasic, psychological, or astral vehicles which contribute to the composite human being. Without taking into account these acquired characteristics on the inner planes, what determines the extent or manner in which the character of the offspring will be modified by the modicum of new physical influence derived from the parents cannot be explained. For, “it is . . . unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of ‘Heredity,’ its servant” (SD 2:178).
The basic idea behind ancestor worship seems to be that its holders envisaged unity in a continuous and never-ending stream of lives, perpetuating itself in succession through the ages, and out of which and back into which individuals arise and sink, an idea in direct contrast to the modern view that the individual is the most important factor in life.
The centre at the crown must be part of the sahasradala, the centre of communication direct between the individual being and the infinite consciousness above.
The chela life or chela path is a beautiful one, full of joy to its very end, but also it calls forth and needs everything noble and high in the learner or disciple; for the powers or faculties of the higher self must be brought into activity in order to attain and to hold those summits of intellectual and spiritual grandeur where the Masters themselves live. For that, masterhood, is the end of discipleship — not, however, that this ideal should be set before us merely as an end to attain to as something of benefit for one’s own self, because that very thought is a selfish one and therefore a stumbling in the path. It is for the individual’s benefit, of course; yet the true idea is that everything and every faculty that is in the soul shall be brought out in the service of all humanity, for this is the royal road, the great royal thoroughfare, of self-conquest” (OG 27-8).
"The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator.” The Life Divine
“The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator.” The Life Divine
“The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” Letters on Yoga
The daemon of Socrates stood for his higher and spiritual self, and parallels in this sense the Christian idea of the Guardian Angel. Hesiod designated them as spirits of the golden age appointed to watch over and guard mankind. We often find two daemones accompanying the individual, one prompting to good, the other to evil; while again it may be the same genius, whose influence is defined as at one time good, at another evil.
::: "The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual"s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important.
“The efficacy of prayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and necessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal order that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the individual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which for human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least important. The Synthesis of Yoga
The ethics of Platonism is intellectualistic. While he questions (Protagoras, 323 ff.) the sophistic teaching that "virtue is knowledge", and stresses the view that the wise man must do what is right, as well as know the right, still the cumulative impetus of his many dialogues on the various virtues and the good life, tends toward the conclusion that the learned, rationally developed soul is the good soul. From this point of view, wisdom is the greatest virtue, (Repub. IV). Fortitude and temperance are necessary virtues of the lower parts of the soul and justice in the individual, as in the state, is the harmonious co-operation of all parts, under the control of reason. Of pleasures, the best are those of the intellect (Philebus); man's greatest happiness is to be found in the contemplation of the highest Ideas (Repub., 583 ff.).
The feminine consorts of the various divinities of ancient peoples represent the vehicular or encompassing substances and powers surrounding the emanating monad itself; and because these powers and substances are in incessant action, they are often grouped under the name sakti, active universal energy, which is septenary, denary, or duodenary in hierarchical construction, according to the manner of counting. Thus these spiritual or divine consorts are equivalent to the theosophical elements or principle-elements, whether of the cosmos or of any individual, which surround the individual monad and furnish the field of action through which it expresses itself.
The Great Brotherhood of the mahatmas on earth, through their chief, the Mahachohan, is the representative on our globe of adi-buddha. Because of this, Tibetan Buddhism recognizes the continuous “reincarnations of Buddha” — not that Gautama Buddha is thus reimbodied but that adi-buddha through its human ray perpetuates itself by reflection in fit and chosen human beings. As adi-buddha is the individualized divine ideation of our universe, all-permeant and omnipresent, those individuals who raise themselves to become self-consciously at one with a ray from adi-buddha are de facto “reincarnations,” greater or minor imbodiments of the cosmic buddha. Adi-buddha manifests through the hierarchy of the celestial buddhas or dhyani-buddhas, these again manifest through the manushya-buddhas and in lesser degree through human individuals who, though great, are inferior to the manushya-buddhas.
…the heart of the subtle being, the nodus of the emotions, sensations, mental consciousness, where the individual Purusha also is seated.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, , Page: 162
The hippopotamus, the crocodile, and the frog were all either aquatic or amphibious animals, and as all ancient zoocosmology took its figures of speech from the surrounding world, these animals were chosen as symbolic of the early creative action in the waters of space, out of which arose the world. In an equally important sense, however, the hippopotamus has distinct reference to the astral world, and hence so far as the individual is concerned, to the post-mortem peregrination of the latter in kama-loka.
"The idea of purpose, of a goal is born of the progressive self-unfolding by the world of its own true nature to the individual Souls inhabiting its forms; for the Being is gradually self-revealed within its own becomings, real Unity emerges out of the Multiplicity and changes entirely the values of the latter to our consciousness.” The Upanishads
“The idea of purpose, of a goal is born of the progressive self-unfolding by the world of its own true nature to the individual Souls inhabiting its forms; for the Being is gradually self-revealed within its own becomings, real Unity emerges out of the Multiplicity and changes entirely the values of the latter to our consciousness.” The Upanishads
"The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a subjective substitute for the true self in our surface experience. . . .”The Life Divine
“The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a subjective substitute for the true self in our surface experience….”The Life Divine
"The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; . . . .” The Life Divine
“The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; …” The Life Divine
". . . the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent. . . .” The Life Divine
“… the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent….” The Life Divine
"The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the individual is not a mere cell of the collective existence; he would not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collective mass.” The Life Divine
“… the individual is not a mere cell of the collective existence; he would not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collective mass.” The Life Divine
The individualized life cycles in the rounds are associated with diversities in environment. Each round is a component part of a great serial order of evolution which may be summarized as the gradual descent of spirit into matter and the subsequent ascent. The first round, even on this globe, was highly spiritual and ethereal: the succeeding rounds are less so, until the middle of the fourth round is reached. After that axial period the process is reversed and by degrees the original state of ethereality is reassumed. A similar process takes place within each round, but on a minor scale — smaller cycles within a dominant one. The physical condition of the earth’s substance is modified in a corresponding way. The amazing modern discoveries of the nature of the atom, of its transmutations, and of the transformation of ‘matter’ into energy have removed any prima facie objections to such a process.
The individuals in these archaic genealogies are at one time to be considered as men, at another time as races or subdivisions of races, while on a cosmic scale they stand for various spiritual powers or celestial energies imbodied in constellations of the zodiac; whereas their wives or consorts are equivalent to the Hindu saktis, their manifested powers, attributes, or faculties in, by, and through which they express themselves. Thus the wife of such an individual is not only his companion, but the veil, sheath, or garment which encloses him.
The Jiva is realised as the individual Self, Atman, the central being above the Nature, calm, untouched by the movements of
"The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be his origin, the truth of his being, the master of his nature, the very stuff of his existence.” Letters on Yoga
“The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be his origin, the truth of his being, the master of his nature, the very stuff of his existence.” Letters on Yoga
The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or
reference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self that is quiescent, at rest, vacant of things and happenings is a support and background to existence, a silent channel or a hypostasis of something Supreme: it is not itself the one entirely real existence, not itself the Supreme. The Eternal, the Supreme is the Lord and the all-originating Spirit. Superior to all activities and not bound by any of them, it is the source, sanction, material, efficient power, master of all activities. All activities proceed from this supreme Self and are determined by it; all are its operations, processes of its own conscious force and not of something alien to Self, some power other than the Spirit. In these activities is expressed the conscious Will or Shakti of the Spirit moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or Power not ignorant but at one with its own self-knowledge and its knowledge of all that it is put out to express. And of this Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us, the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it and hold it, because profounder and more intimately near to the Identical and Absolute than the surface activities of our thought powers. To know that will in ourselves and in the universe and follow it to its divine finalities, whatever these may be, must surely be the highest way and truest culmination for knowledge as for works, for the seeker in life and for the seeker in Yoga.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 289-90
The mammals in this fourth round came later in time than man, having arisen from germinal cells thrown off from the bodies of the individuals of the human racial stem millions and millions of years ago, when nature still allowed such a procedure. These early mammals have since become highly specialized. The animals below the mammals originated from the human stock in the preceding third round, and hence their ancestors or sishtas were on earth and provided the origins of the later widely disseminated sub-mammalian stocks in this round, even before the human sishtas felt the incoming human life-wave and multiplied over the earth.
The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW *Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW Vol. 16.
The Mother (to a young person): “It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother—Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16—Some Answers from the Mother
::: The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” The Mother - Collected Works, Centenary Ed., Vol. 16 - Some Answers from the Mother*
the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth; this last may be called the psycho-spiritual part of the change. It is quite possible for the psychic transformation to take one beyond the individual into the cosmic. Even the occult opening establishes a connection with the cosmic mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical. The psychic realises the contact with all-existence, the oneness of the Self, the universal love and other realisations which lead to the cosmic consciousness.
The original, pure Bacchic rites pertained to high initiation, in which the candidate becomes conscious of his oneness with divinity. Thus Bacchus, with his symbolic serpent and wine, stands for divine inspiration. But when the keys of the sacred science were lost and symbols were interpreted literally, the rites degenerated and often became profligate. Bacchus-Dionysos also figures as the inspirer of dramatic and representative art, inspiring the individual with the divine afflatus or mystic frenzy. Originally this meant the inner communion of the candidate with his own inner god and the consequent inspiration; on a lower plane it signifies the fleeting inspiration of poet and artist, and finally it degenerated into hysteria and morbid psychic states.
Theosophy teaches the constant rebirths of the identic spiritual-intellectual individuality throughout the manvantara; and that, even after union into paranirvana, the individuality, precisely because it is then on its own higher plane or sphere of life, is not lost and will reemerge at a new manvantara to pursue its own particular cycle. This eternal monad, the spiritual-intellectual individuality, is the real and truly immortal essence of the person; and within this supreme cycle of immortality are a series of less immortalities, each representing the life cycle of one of the imbodiments of the monad. Death therefore of necessity becomes a recurrent process, precisely like birth or rebirth, and of many degrees, and simply means the dissolution of some group of lower sheaths enclosing the individual in imbodiment.
The process of yoga is a tumiog of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in outer appearances and attractions of things to a higher state .in which the Trans- cendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it.
The psychic has indeed the quality of peace— -but that is not its main character as it is of the &If or Atman. The psychic is the Divine element in the individual being and its characteristic power Is to turn everything towards the Divine, to bring a fire of purification, aspiration, devotion, true light of discernment, feeling, will, action, which transforms by degrees the whole nature.
The psychic has indeed the quality of peace—but that is not its main character as it is of the Self or Atman. The psychic is the divine element in the individual being and its characteristic power is to turn everything towards the Divine, to bring a fire of purification, aspiration, devotion, true light of discernment, feeling, will, an action which transforms by degrees the whole nature. Quietude, peace and silence in the heart and th
refore in the vital part of the being are necessary to reach the psychic, to plunge in it, for the perturbations of the vital nature, desire, emotion turned ego-wards or world-wards are the main part of the screen that hides the soul from the nature. It is better, th
refore, to be free from the mental constructions when you take the plunge and to have only the sense of aspiration, of devotion, of self-giving to the Divine.
Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page 1197
The psychic is realised as the Purusha behind the heart. It Is not universalised like the Jivatman, but is the individual soul
The psychic opening through the heart puts us primarily into connection with the individual Divine, the Divine in his inner relation with us ; it is especially the source of love and bhakti.
“Therefore the only final goal possible is the emergence of the infinite consciousness in the individual; it is his recovery of the truth of himself by self-knowledge and by self-realisation, the truth of the Infinite in being, the Infinite in consciousness, the Infinite in delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression.” The Life Divine
“There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
The social theory, termed historical materialism, represents the application of the general principles of materialist dialectics to human society, by which they were first suggested. The fundamental changes and stages which society has passed through in the course of its complex evolution are traced primarily to the influence of changes taking place in its economic base. This base has two aspects: material forces of production (technics, instrumentalities) and economic relations (prevailing system of ownership, exchange, distribution). Growing out of this base is a social superstructure of laws, governments, arts, sciences, religions, philosophies and the like. The view taken is that society evolved as it did primarily because fundamental changes in the economic base resulting from conflicts of of interest in respect to productive forces, and involving radical changes in economic relations, have compelled accommodating changes in the social superstructure. Causal action is traced both ways between base and superstructure, but when any "higher" institution threatens the position of those who hold controlling economic power at the base, the test of their power is victory in the ensuing contest. The role of the individual in history is acknowledged, but is seen in relation to the movement of underlying forces. Cf. Plekhanov, Role of the Individual m History.
The soul or psyche is immutable only^ in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing ps3'cbic individual evolving in tbS manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part Jn the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine J^re that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until h is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it.
::: "The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
“The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
“The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” Letters on Yoga
The term may also refer to the “immortal vehicle” within each person, the individuality in contradistinction to the evanescent personality; that is, “the Spiritual Soul, or the Immortal monad — a combination of the fifth, sixth and seventh” principles (ML 114).
“The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
The true significance of Chenresi is the Third Logos of our solar system and the buddhi-manas of the individual human being, the active aspect of the human spiritual monad. The efflux or influence emanating from Chenresi and permeating the lower parts of the human constitution is Padmapani (the lotus-handed); Padmapani therefore is the bodhisattva of Avalokitesvara or Chenresi, and whether cosmically or psychologically the equivalent of the manifested potency of Brahma.
The universal life principle which manifests everywhere in nature, and which under one of its forms is called kundalini-sakti, of necessity includes the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Attraction and repulsion being of cosmic origin are therefore of necessity likewise manifest in the manifold conditions of human life; but this does not imply that the individual should passively or negatively accept disturbances caused by inharmony when it is within his power as an offspring of the higher divinities to restore it — insofar as his energies and knowledge permit — to the harmony or cosmic unity from which these cosmic energies themselves spring. Hence the teaching of the greatest sages and seers of history has been to rise above the elements of personal attraction or repulsion, and to blend the two into the compassionate mastery which the indomitable human will, when trained and practiced, can acquire over not merely moods but all conditions in life. Thus he becomes a friend to all, and an enemy to none, repelling evil and attracting good, until these by association may themselves blend or marry into that mystic unity which is the achievement or culmination of evolution, whether human or cosmic.
The vital center of his doctrine is duration rather than intuition. Duration is the original thing in itself, the "substance" of philosophic tradition, except that to Bergson it is a specific experience, revealed to the individual in immediate experience. All things, consciousness, matter, time, evolution, motion and the absolute are so many specialized tensional forms of duration. The phrase elan vital sums up his vitalistic doctrine that there is an original life force, that it has passed from one generation of living beings to another by way of developed individual organisms, these being the connecting links between the generations. Bergson regards as pseudo-evolutionary the effort to arrange all living beings into a grand uni-linear series. True or creative evolution is pluri-dimensional, i.e., the life force is conserved in every line of evolution of living beings, causing all of the numerous varieties of living forms, creating all new species, and dividing itself more and more as it advances. As the vital impetus is not moving towards any fixed, predetermined and final end, an immanent teleology is within the life force itself.
The word is also familiar in its evil side, in the expression evil genius. Human beings hover between the influence of benign and malign powers which have been personified into guardian angels and besetting demons, or good and evil stars. The good and evil genii of the individual are among the karmic conditions which, interacting with free choice, modify his ruling destiny; they are either the heavenly voice of the invisible spiritual prototype, or the lower astral person.
Thinking was to Fichte a wholly practical affair, a form of action. Since experience is given in the form of consciousness, the origin and nature of consciousness is the key to all problems. The ego is the point at which the creative activity of the Absolute emerges in the individual consciousness. The world means nothing of itself. It has no independent self-existence. It exists for the sole purpose of affording man the occasion for realizing the ends of his existence. It is merely the material for his duty. Fichte sought to bring out the structural principles of the knowing act.
thin ::: superl. --> Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite; as, a thin plate of metal; thin paper; a thin board; a thin covering.
Rare; not dense or thick; -- applied to fluids or soft mixtures; as, thin blood; thin broth; thin air.
Not close; not crowded; not filling the space; not having the individuals of which the thing is composed in a close or compact state; hence, not abundant; as, the trees of a forest are thin;
This descent of the ray tip into, and selection of, suitable earth of matter, has been the basis of all the various methods of procreation. The process began in the huge ovoid form of the ethereal first root-race by simple division of this human cell, as the embryo today repeats in beginning its rapid review of racial records. “One infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. . . . those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations” (SD 1:223n). See also HEREDITY; PROCREATION; REPRODUCTION
"This integral knowledge is the knowledge of the Divine present in the individual; it is the entire experience of the Lord secret in the heart of man, revealed now as the supreme Self of his existence, the Sun of all his illumined consciousness, the Master and Power of all his works, the divine Fountain of all his soul"s love and delight, the Lover and Beloved of his worship and adoration. It is the knowledge too of the Divine extended in the universe, of the Eternal from whom all proceeds and in whom all lives and has its being, of the Self and Spirit of the cosmos, of Vasudeva who has become all this that is, of the Lord of cosmic existence who reigns over the works of Nature. It is the knowledge of the divine Purusha luminous in his transcendent eternity, the form of whose being escapes from the thought of the mind but not from its silence; it is the entire living experience of him as absolute Self, supreme Brahman, supreme Soul, supreme Godhead: for that seemingly incommunicable Absolute is at the same time and even in that highest status the originating Spirit of the cosmic action and Lord of all these existences.” Essays on the Gita*
“This integral knowledge is the knowledge of the Divine present in the individual; it is the entire experience of the Lord secret in the heart of man, revealed now as the supreme Self of his existence, the Sun of all his illumined consciousness, the Master and Power of all his works, the divine Fountain of all his soul’s love and delight, the Lover and Beloved of his worship and adoration. It is the knowledge too of the Divine extended in the universe, of the Eternal from whom all proceeds and in whom all lives and has its being, of the Self and Spirit of the cosmos, of Vasudeva who has become all this that is, of the Lord of cosmic existence who reigns over the works of Nature. It is the knowledge of the divine Purusha luminous in his transcendent eternity, the form of whose being escapes from the thought of the mind but not from its silence; it is the entire living experience of him as absolute Self, supreme Brahman, supreme Soul, supreme Godhead: for that seemingly incommunicable Absolute is at the same time and even in that highest status the originating Spirit of the cosmic action and Lord of all these existences.” Essays on the Gita
“This is the Logos (the first), or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha (also called Dorjechang). As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his heart — the ‘diamond heart,’ Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa)” (SD 1:571). Adi-buddha is the individualized monadic focus of adi-buddhi, primordial cosmic wisdom or intelligence, synonymous with mahabuddhi or mahat (universal mind). Otherwise expressed, adi-buddha is the supreme being heading the hierarchy of compassion and our solar universe; the fountain of light running through all subordinate hierarchies and thus the supreme lord and initiator of the wisdom side of our universe.
This something larger is the cosmic drama written, staged, and acted by the Absolute, who is artist and actor as well as a rational intelligence, intent no less upon dramatic than upon intelligible unity and self-expression. The world-process is tragic, witness the sin and suffering and imperfection with which it is fraught. But in the infinite tragedy, as well as in the tragedies composed by men, evil is contributory to the perfection of the whole, and, when seen and accepted as such by the finite individual, not only loses its sting but produces a "catharsis" of his attitude towards it, in which he cheerfully accepts it, battles with it, and finds his triumph over it in nobly enduring it. This "catharsis," identifying him as it does with the meaning of the life of the Absolute, is his peace and his salvation. Main works: Logic, 1888; The Philosophical Theory of the State, 1899; Value and Destiny of the Individual, 1913. -- B.A.G.F.
This teaching is in all the religions of the world, expressing the law of our higher nature, which is love and harmony, as contrasted with the law of our lower nature, which makes for personal separateness and sets the individual at variance with his neighbor. Its realization in thought and conduct is an indispensable requisite to attainment on the path of wisdom and liberation. The following are selected from many similar teachings:
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
.Thus the soul or psychic essence, which is the Purusha entering into the evolution and supporting it, carries in itself all the divine potentialities ; but the individual psychic being which it puts forth as its representative assumes the imperfection of Nature and evolves in it till it has recovered its full psychic essence and united itself with the Self above of which the soul is the individual projection in the evolution. This duality in the being on all its planes, — for it is true in different ways not only of the Self and the psychic, but of the mental, vital and physical
To Boethius (475-525) it was given to furnish the philosophy and definition of the person that held for the Middle Ages: "A person is the individual substance of a rational nature."
To illustrate the meaning in the case of the human being, every one of the seven main elements or principles into which the human constitution may be divided might readily each one be called a fire, subdivided in a septenary way, so that all the seven human principles and elements when thus considered are seen to be the fires of intelligence, life, consciousness, and substance, reflecting as the individual does in his sevenfold constitution the seven kosmic elements and principles subdivided in septenary fashion.
To summarize: what modern usage calls heredity, the transmission of characteristics from parents to children, is not a merely physiologic or biologic mechanism acting automatically or fortuitously; but actually is brought about because of the attraction to certain families, or certain parents, of reimbodying egos possessing in greater or larger degree the same characteristics which the parents themselves have. On identic lines is to be explained the reason why races and even nations continue with their respective characteristics; egos are drawn to similar fields for incarnation. Thus it is that the transmission of type and characteristics continues both racially and individually from generation to generation, always modified by the individualities of the reimbodying egos.
totalitarian ::: of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed.
transcendent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her — the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
**Transcendent"s.**
triple transformation ::: "First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness." [S22:95]
T'ung: Mere identity, or sameness, especially in social institutions and standards, which is inferior to harmony (ho) in which social distinctions and differences are in complete concord. (Confucianism). Agreement, as in "agreement with the superiors" (shang t'ung). The method of agreement, which includes identity, generic relationship, co-existence, and partial resemblance. "Identity means two substances having one name. Generic relationship means inclusion in the same whole. Both being in the same room is a case of co-existence. Partial resemblance means having some points of resemblance." See Mo chi. (Neo-Mohism). --W.T.C. T'ung i: The joint method of similarities and differences, by which what is present and what is absent can be distinguished. See Mo chi. --W.T.C. Tung Chung-shu: (177-104 B.C.) was the leading Confucian of his time, premier to two feudal princes, and consultant to the Han emperor in framing national policies. Firmly believing in retribution, he strongly advocated the "science of catastrophic and anomalies," and became the founder and leader of medieval Confucianism which was extensively confused with the Yin Yang philosophy. Extremely antagonistic towards rival schools, he established Confucianism as basis of state religion and education. His best known work, Ch-un-ch'iu Fan-lu, awaits English translation. --W.T.C. Turro y Darder, Ramon: Spanish Biologist and Philosopher. Born in Malgrat, Dec. 8 1854. Died in Barcelona, June 5, 1926. As a Biologist, his conclusions about the circulation of the blood, more than half a century ago, were accepted and verified by later researchers and theorists. Among other things, he showed the insufficiency and unsatisfactoriness of the mechanistic and neomechanistic explanations of the circulatory process. He was also the first to busy himself with endocrinology and bacteriological immunity. As a philosopher Turro combated the subjectivistic and metaphysical type of psychology, and circumscribed scientific investigation to the determination of the conditions that precede the occurrence of phenomena, considering useless all attempt to reach final essences. Turro does not admit, however, that the psychical series or conscious states may be causally linked to the organic series. His formula was: Physiology and Consciousness are phenomena that occur, not in connection, but in conjunction. His most important work is Filosofia Critica, in which he has put side by side two antagonistic conceptions of the universe, the objective and the subjectne conceptions. In it he holds that, at the present crisis of science and philosophy, the business of intelligence is to realize that science works on philosophical presuppositions, but that philosophy is no better off with its chaos of endless contradictions and countless systems of thought. The task to be realized is one of coming together, to undo what has been done and get as far as the original primordial concepts with which philosophical inquiry began. --J.A.F. Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations. --J.J.R. Types, theory of: See Logic, formal, § 6; Paradoxes, logical; Ramified theory of types. Type-token ambiguity: The words token and type are used to distinguish between two senses of the word word. Individual marks, more or less resembling each other (as "cat" resembles "cat" and "CAT") may (1) be said to be "the same word" or (2) so many "different words". The apparent contradiction therby involved is removed by speaking of the individual marks as tokens, in contrast with the one type of which they are instances. And word may then be said to be subject to type-token ambiguity. The terminology can easily be extended to apply to any kind of symbol, e.g. as in speaking of token- and type-sentences. Reference: C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 4.517. --M.B. Tz'u: (a) Parental love, kindness, or affection, the ideal Confucian virtue of parents. (b) Love, kindness in general. --W.T.C. Tzu hua: Self-transformation or spontaneous transformation without depending on any divine guidance or eternal agency, but following the thing's own principle of being, which is Tao. (Taoism). --W.T.C. Tzu jan: The natural, the natural state, the state of Tao, spontaneity as against artificiality. (Lao Tzu; Huai-nan Tzu, d. 122 B.C.). --W.T.C. U
Unbom who presides over the individual being and its develop- ments, associated \vith it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be
Unio mystica: (Lat.) Mystical union; the merging of the individual consciousness, cognitively or affectively, with a superior, or supreme consciousness. See Mysticism. -- V.J.B.
Universal class: See logic, formal, § 7. Universal proposition: See particular proposition. Universal quantifier: See quantifier. Universalism: The doctrine that each individual should seek as an end the welfare of all. Usually advanced on the basis of the principle that the intrinsic value of an entity, e.g., pleasure, does not vary with the individual possessing it. -- C.A.B.
UNIVERSAL NATURE. ::: There is the universal mental, the universal vital, the universal physical Nature and it is out of a selection of their forces and mo\*cmcnts that the individual mind, vital and physical are made.
"Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time.” The Life Divine
“Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time.” The Life Divine
::: "Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” *The Life Divine
“Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” The Life Divine
ūrn.a yoga ::: integral yoga, a spiritual path whose aim is "union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine [saccidananda] through every part of our human nature . . . so that the whole may be transformed into a divine nature of being"; its central method is for the individual "to spiritualise his being by the power of the soul in mind opening itself directly to a higher spiritual force and being and to perfect by that higher force [sakti] so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature". purna p
varna&
"Veda, then, is the creation of an age anterior to our intellectual philosophies. In that original epoch thought proceeded by other methods than those of our logical reasoning and speech accepted modes of expression which in our modern habits would be inadmissible. The wisest then depended on inner experience and the suggestions of the intuitive mind for all knowledge that ranged beyond mankind"s ordinary perceptions and daily activities. Their aim was illumination, not logical conviction, their ideal the inspired seer, not the accurate reasoner. Indian tradition has faithfully preserved this account of the origin of the Vedas. The Rishi was not the individual composer of the hymn, but the seer (drashtâ ) of an eternal truth and an impersonal knowledge. The language of Veda itself is shruti, a rhythm not composed by the intellect but heard, a divine Word that came vibrating out of the Infinite to the inner audience of the man who had previously made himself fit for the impersonal knowledge.” The Secret of the Veda
“Veda, then, is the creation of an age anterior to our intellectual philosophies. In that original epoch thought proceeded by other methods than those of our logical reasoning and speech accepted modes of expression which in our modern habits would be inadmissible. The wisest then depended on inner experience and the suggestions of the intuitive mind for all knowledge that ranged beyond mankind’s ordinary perceptions and daily activities. Their aim was illumination, not logical conviction, their ideal the inspired seer, not the accurate reasoner. Indian tradition has faithfully preserved this account of the origin of the Vedas. The Rishi was not the individual composer of the hymn, but the seer (drashtâ ) of an eternal truth and an impersonal knowledge. The language of Veda itself is shruti, a rhythm not composed by the intellect but heard, a divine Word that came vibrating out of the Infinite to the inner audience of the man who had previously made himself fit for the impersonal knowledge.” The Secret of the Veda
video "graphics" Moving images presented as a sequence of {static images} (called "frames") representing snapshots of the scene, taken at regularly spaced time intervals, e.g. 50 frames per second. Apart from the frame rate, other important properties of a video are the {resolution} and {colour depth} of the individual images. Digital video data is typically stored and transmitted in a format like {MPEG} or {H.264} that includes synchoronised {sound}. Unlike broadcast {television}, digital video on a computer or network uses {compression}. Compression is even more important for video that for static images due to the large amount of data involved in even a short video. Furthermore, compression allows video to be transmitted via a channel whose bandwidth is less than the raw data rate implied by the resolution and frame rate. This allows the recipient to start displaying the video before the transmission is complete, a process known as {streaming}. Compression can be relatively slow but decompression is done in {real-time} with the picture quality and {frame rate} varying with the processing power available and the size and scaling of the picture. There are many types of software for displaying video on computers including {Windows Media Player} from {Microsoft}, {QuickTime} from {Apple Computer}, {DivX}, {VLC}, {RealPlayer} and {Acorn Computers}' {Replay}. (2011-01-04)
Viewing the question from the consciousness aspect, death means the exchange of one mode of consciousness for others. We cannot say offhand that we are either mortal or immortal, since we contain various elements of both kinds. The essence of the individuality is unconditionally immortal, its sheaths or bodies are mortal in various and relative degrees.
vijnanapadma ::: [the lotus of the vijnana, the centre of the gnostic consciousness in the individual].
voice mail "messaging, business" Any system for sending, storing and retrieving {audio} messages, like a telephone answering machine. A voice mailbox is typically associated with a telephone number or extension. When the number is called and the line is busy or not answered, the caller hears a message left by the owner and is given instructions for leaving a message or other available options, such as paging the individual or being transferred to an operator. The owner of a mailbox can change the outgoing message or listen to incoming messages after entering a {PIN}. Members of a voice mail system can generally forward or {broadcast} messages to other members' boxes. The experience of two people trying to reach other by telephone but always reaching each other's voice mail is referred to as "(tele)phone tag". (1996-11-03)
vyakti. ::: the personal; the individual; the totality of physical and vital processes
vyasti ::: the separative being, the individual. cf. samasti
wapinschaw ::: n. --> An exhibition of arms. according to the rank of the individual, by all persons bearing arms; -- formerly made at certain seasons in each district.
“We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
". . . what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature — this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised, — a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
“… what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
What is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical construction of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us.We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 382-383
wideness ::: the expansion of consciousness that comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out toward the universal; it is felt as a great substantial vastness giving the sense of oneness free and infinite.
wideness ::: “The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
will, free ::: Sri Aurobindo: Our notion of free will is apt to be tainted with the excessive individualism of the human ego and to assume the figure of an independent will acting on its own isolated account, in a complete liberty without any determination other than its own choice and single unrelated movement. This idea ignores the fact that our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. Our total being can rise out of subjection to fact of present Nature only by an identification with a greater Truth and a greater Nature. The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence. There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line. On one line the being could feel and behave as an independent self-existence uniting itself with its own impersonal Reality; it could, so self-conceived, act with a great force, but either this action would be still within an enlarged frame of its past and present self-formation of power of Nature or else it would be the cosmic or supreme Force that acted in it and there would be no personal initiation of action, no sense therefore of individual free will but only of an impersonal cosmic or supreme Will or Energy at its work. On the other line the being would feel itself a spiritual instrument and so act as a power of the Supreme Being, limited in its workings only by the potencies of the Supernature, which are without bounds or any restriction except its own Truth and self-law, and by the Will in her. But in either case there would be, as the condition of a freedom from the control of a mechanical action of Nature-forces, a submission to a greater conscious Power or an acquiescent unity of the individual being with its intention and movement in his own and in the world"s existence.” *The Life Divine
Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and sea- sons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts.
yoga nidra. ::: a state of half-contemplation and half-sleep; light yogic sleep when the individual retains slight awareness; a state between sleep and wakefulness
Yuga(Sanskrit) ::: A word meaning an "age," a period of time. A yuga is a period of mundane time, and four ofthese periods are usually enumerated in "divine years":1. Krita or Satya Yuga. . . . 4,000Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 400Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,8002. Treta Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . 3,000Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 300Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,6003. Dvapara Yuga. . . . . . . . 2,000Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 200Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,4004. Kali Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,200TOTAL . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .12,000This rendered in years of mortals equals:4,800 x 360 = 1,728,0003,600 x 360 = 1,296,0002,400 x 360 = 864,0001,200 x 360 = 432,000. . . . . .Total 4,320,000Of these four yugas, our present racial period is the fourth or kali yuga, often called the "iron age" or the"black age." It is stated to have commenced at the moment of Krishna's death, usually given as 3,102years before the Christian era. There is a very important point of the teaching in connection with theyugas which must not be forgotten. It is the following: The four yugas as above outlined refer to whatmodern theosophical philosophy calls a root-race, although indeed a root-race from its individualbeginning to its individual ending is about double the length of the composite yuga above set forth incolumnar form. The racial yugas, however, overlap because each new great race is born at about themiddle period of the parent race, although the individual length of any one race is as above stated. Thus itis that by the overlapping of the races, a race and its succeeding race may for a long time becontemporaneous on the face of the globe.As the four yugas are a reflection in human history of what takes place in the evolution of the earth itselfand of the planetary chain, therefore the same scheme of yugas applies also on a cosmic scale -- thereexist the four series of satya yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga, in the evolution of the earth,and on a still larger scale in the evolution of a planetary chain. Of course these cosmic yugas are verymuch longer than the racial yugas, but the same general scheme of 4, 3, 2 applies throughout. For furtherdetails of the teaching concerning the yugas, the student should consult H. P. Blavatsky's The SecretDoctrine, and the work by the present author, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.
KEYS (10k)
105 Sri Aurobindo
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 The Mother
5 Sri Ramakrishna
4 Manly P Hall
2 Schopenhauer
2 SATM?
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Anandamayi Ma
2 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
1 William James
1 Wikipedia
1 Werner Jaeger
1 V M Cruz
1 Tolstoy
1 The Mother
1 Swami Avdheshanand
1 Satprem
1 Saint Coleridge
1 Ramesh Balsekar
1 Ramakrishna
1 Plotinus
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
1 Nikola Tesla
1 nay
1 Mar-cus Aurelius
1 Manly P. Hall
1 "Mahabharata
1 Mage the Ascension
1 Ken Wilber?
1 Ken Wilber
1 Joseph Weizenbaum
1 Jean Gebser
1 JC
1 James George Frazer
1 James Clerk Maxwell
1 Friedrich Nietzsche
1 Frank Visser
1 Charles F Haanel
1 Charles Darwin
1 Swami Vivekananda
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
55 Sri Aurobindo
42 Carl Jung
27 Albert Einstein
15 Friedrich Nietzsche
13 John Stuart Mill
12 Erich Fromm
10 Joseph Campbell
10 Herbert Marcuse
9 Sri Ramana Maharshi
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
9 Emma Goldman
8 William James
8 Ronald Reagan
8 Jordan Peterson
8 Jordan B Peterson
8 Adolf Hitler
7 Sigmund Freud
7 Mahatma Gandhi
7 John Steinbeck
7 Jiddu Krishnamurti
1:An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
~ William James,#KEYS
2:The "I" or "Mine" of the individual comes of Ajnana -- ignorance of truth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
3:If the individual cannot dream of a better future, he cannot live well today. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #KEYS
4:It reveals itself rather than is learned. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
5:The psychic is the support of the individual evolution ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Psychic Being, #KEYS
6:The individual cannot be perfect until he has surrendered all he now calls himself to the divine Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
7:If one gains the Peace of the Self, it will spread without any effort on the part of the individual. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
8:The malady of the world is that the individual cannot find his real soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man, #KEYS
9:Brahman is in this world to represent Itself in the values of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Destiny of the Individual, #KEYS
10:Any spiritual endeavour which enables to raise the human consciousness to cosmic consciousness, to unite the individual with God, is Yoga.
~ Swami Avdheshanand,#KEYS
11:No man is simply good or simply bad; every man is a mixture of contraries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
12:The individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #KEYS
13:All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the individual being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Surrender, #KEYS
14:Three fundamental aspects of the Divine - the Individual or Immanent, the Cosmic and the Transcendent
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
15:Always it is the individual who progresses and compels the rest to progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea, #KEYS
16:The "I" which makes one worldly and attached to lust and wealth is mischievous. It separates the individual from the Universal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
17:The individual as spirit or being is not confined within his humanity; he has been less than human. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
18:I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
19:As lead in mercury soon dissolves, so the individual soul melts away, losing its limitations when it falls into the ocean of Brahman. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
20:God manifests Himself in the individual partially, but He stands behind the progress of the world wholly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
21:Always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Sense, #KEYS
22:The greatness of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
23:No machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS
24:The centre of mental thinking is the ego, the person of the individual thinker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
25:Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
26:The dance of Brindaban is not complete without the death-dance of Kurukshetra; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
27:Man himself, who takes up all that went before him and transmutes it into the term of manhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
28:The union of the individual soul (jiva) and the supreme soul (paramatman) is like the union of the hour and minute hands at twelve o'clock. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
29:All force is cosmic and the individual is merely an instrument. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, Becoming Conscious of the Mother's Force, #KEYS
30:All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
31:Nothing divides men so much as pride, whether it be the pride of the individual, of the family, of the class or of the nation. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
32:The individual consciousness by the attempt to measure the Impersonal loses its individual egoism and becomes one with Him. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
33:The individual dies, the kind is indestructible. The individual is the expression in time of the kind which is outside time. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
34:Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
35:The perfect society will be that which most entirely favours the perfection of the individual. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Imperfection of Past Aggregates, #KEYS
36:The individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Opening, #KEYS
37:What Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
38:He is what he is, but he is also the past of all that he was and the potentiality of all that he is not. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
39:The enemy of all real religion, is human egoism, the egoism of the individual, the egoism of class and nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Religion of Humanity, #KEYS
40:The individual exists in the Transcendent, but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the individual. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
41:The attempt of the individual, the living atom, to maintain and aggrandise itself is the whole sense of Desire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #KEYS
42:The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Destiny of the Individual, #KEYS
43:Without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
44:The life of the individual must have the same rhythm of significance, the same law of progression as the cosmic life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
45:It is necessarily through the individual Self that we must arrive at the One, for that is the basis of all our experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Modes of the Self, #KEYS
46:The divine Nature, free and perfect and blissful, must be manifested in the individual in order that it may manifest in the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS
47:The intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - VI, #KEYS
48:The universe is there as a truth in God even though the individual soul may have shut its eyes to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #KEYS
49:The body-consciousness is a patient servant and can be in its large reserve of possibilities a potent instrument of the individual life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
50:The group-man follows in the wake of the individual and is always far behind the highest individual development. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Drive towards Economic Centralisation, #KEYS
51:Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #KEYS
52:The individual is not a mere cell of the collective existence; he would not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collective mass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
53:The universal particularises itself in the individual; the individual contains in himself all the generalities of the universal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
54:In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #KEYS
55:The community exists by the individual, for its mind and life and body are constituted by the mind and life and body of its composing individuals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
56:The mind is the outgoing faculty of the individual. If that is turned within, it becomes still in course of time and that 'I-AM' alone prevails. 'I-AM' is the whole Truth. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
57:The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #KEYS
58:In his self-integration the soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #KEYS
59:The individual self and the universal self are one; in every world, in every being, in each thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago,#KEYS
60:The individual soul lives here by the All-Soul and depends upon it; the All-Soul very evidently does not exist by the individual or depend upon it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Order of the Worlds, #KEYS
61:If efforts were a must, it would mean that the discovery of the Real depends on the efforts of the individual. The Supreme would not be the Supreme if He were subject to anything at all. He and He alone is at all times. ~ Anandamayi Ma, #KEYS
62:In the world, as it is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual progressively towards the truth-consciousness.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life,#KEYS
63:Forms of religion but forge so many bonds round the individual; Spiritual Consciousness alone disperses them." ~ "Mahabharata," one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India… contains philosophical and devotional material", Wikipedia, #KEYS
64:It is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
65:What the members of the body are in the individual being, reasonable beings are in the same way even though separate, because they are formed to cooperate in one common work. ~ Mar-cus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
66:The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#KEYS
67:The individual, standing alone, cannot develop; he depends on the support and assistance of the group to which he belongs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Shall India be Free? - National Development and Foreign Rule, #KEYS
68:The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #KEYS
69:Who is it that loves and who that suffers? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. ~ Anandamayi Ma, #KEYS
70:It is only through the individual mind that the mass can arrive at a clear knowledge and creation of the thing it held in its subconscient self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #KEYS
71:Even the feeling of having understood is likely to lead one into a sense of illusion, because the individual thinks he has found something to impart to others, but there is no individual. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
72:Yet in this victory of the rational I over traditional authority, there is latent a force which is to triumph over the individual: the concept of Truth, a new universal category to which every personal preference must yield. ~ Werner Jaeger, Paideia I:155, #KEYS
73:In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
74:The growth of the individual is the indispensable means for the inner growth as distinguished from the outer force and expansion of the collective being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #KEYS
75:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
76:The sleeping castle is that ultimate abyss to which the descending consciousness submerges in dream, where the individual life is on the point of dissolving into undifferentiated energy: and it would be death to dissolve; yet death, also, to lack the fire. ~ JC, THWATF, #KEYS
77:Plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain statement of his being. Each is the whole Eternal concealed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
78:When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #KEYS
79:The new attitude will be consolidated only when the individual can gradually begin to disregard his ego. As long as our thinking is exclusively self-centered the world will remain fragmented. At best the "Thou" will become visible to the "I"; but never the whole. ~ Jean Gebser, #KEYS
80:Just as the difference between space in a pot and space outside disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist. ~ Ramesh Balsekar, #KEYS
81:Imagination… reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference;... the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects. ~ Saint Coleridge, #KEYS
82:A Jack of all trades may be a master of integration; as such an individual knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring the individual's disciplines together in a practical manner. This person is a generalist rather than a specialist.
~ V M Cruz, The Jack of Too Many,#KEYS
83:All is coordinated in the universe. All things depend mutually on each other. All conspires to one sole end, not only in the individual whose parts are perfectly linked together, but anteriorly and to a higher degree in the universe. ~ Plotinus, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
84:Augoeides is an obscure term meaning luminous body and thought to refer to the planets. Aleister Crowley considered the term to refer to the Holy Guardian Angel of Abramelin; the Atman of Hinduism the Daemon of the ancient Greeks. Robert Lomas associates the term with the Higher Self or soul of the individual
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
85:You are not the personality or the individual. This body is the food-body on which consciousness appears. The vital breath does all the work and consciousness witnesses it all. This body is only the food-body for the consumption and the sustenance of the 'I Amness'. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #KEYS
86:The object of a Yoga of spiritual knowledge can be nothing else than this eternal Reality, this Self, this Brahman, this Transcendent that dwells over all and in all and is manifest yet concealed in the individual, manifest yet disguised in the universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
87:Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society ~ nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community., #KEYS
88:Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual Man for the sake of the individual soul alone,—a lonely salvation is not his complete ideal,—but for the world also or rather for God in the world, for God in all as well as above all and not for God solely and separately in one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ideal Law of Social Development, #KEYS
89:For the World-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not exclude it, even as the universe embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude him.
The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Indefinable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.5-11,#KEYS
90:Having become a citizen of two worlds, the individual must act accordingly. There can be no backsliding, because the individual must reach a state of certainty before this enlightenment is given that makes it utterly and completely impossible to backslide. He cannot 'get it' and then fail and turn from it. If he turns from it, it means he never had it. If he fails, he fails himself. He cannot fail the infinite. ~ Manly P Hall, #KEYS
91:By this Yoga we not only seek the Infinite, but we call upon the Infinite to unfold himself in human life. Therefore the Shastra of our Yoga must provide for an infinite liberty in the receptive human soul. A free adaptability in the manner and type of the individual's acceptance of the Universal and Transcendent into himself is the right condition for the full spiritual life in man.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 57,#KEYS
92:The salvation of the world depends only on the individual whose world it is. At least, every individual must act as if the whole future of the world, of humanity itself, depends on him. Anything less is a shirking of responsibility and is itself a dehumanizing force, for anything less encourages the individual to look upon himself as a mere actor in a drama written by anonymous agents, as less than a whole person, and that is the beginning of passivity and aimlessness.
~ Joseph Weizenbaum,#KEYS
93:This gesture of the Divine Mother teaches us also what should be the approach and attitude of human beings in all their activities. In all our movements we should always remember Him, refer to Him, consider that in the last analysis each and every movement comes from Him and we must always offer them to Him, return them to the parent-source from where they come, therein lies freedom, the divine detachment which the individual must possess always in order to be one with Him, feel one's identity with Him. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, 12, #KEYS
94:For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present for the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, #KEYS
95:States of consciousness there are in which Death is only a change in immortal Life, pain a violent backwash of the waters of universal delight, limitation a turning of the Infinite upon itself, evil a circling of the good around its own perfection; and this not in abstract conception only, but in actual vision and in constant and substantial experience. To arrive at such states of consciousness may, for the individual, be one of the most important and indispensable steps of his progress towards self-perfection.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
96:Increasing knowledge is important, but we must also remember that we already know far more than we are willing or able to apply. The human race is not wandering in darkness without guidance or direction. It is not necessary to be universally enlightened in order to live a constructive code. The conflict is in the individual. He must decide for himself the degree to which he is willing to control and re-educate his own appetites and instincts. The inducements to personality reorientation are real, evident, and undeniable. ~ Manly P. Hall, Horizon Magazine, Winter 1950, p. 16, #KEYS
97:(Mother to Mona Sarkar:) "You know, the Grace is something that pushes you towards the goal to be reached. Do not try to judge it with your mind – you will get nowhere. For it is something tremendous which is not expressed in words or in feelings.
You know, when the Grace acts, the result could be a death or misfortune or happiness; it could even be a catastrophe but it is always the best for the individual. It is a blow sent by the Divine for a bounding progress. The Grace is that which makes you advance rapidly towards the realisation." ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother - Luminous Notes, p.116#KEYS
98:Talk 15.
A question was asked about the Upanishadic passage, "The Supreme Spirit is subtler than the subtlest and larger than the largest."
M.: Even the structure of the atom has been found by the mind. Therefore the mind is subtler than the atom. That which is behind the mind, namely the individual soul, is subtler than the mind.
Further, the Tamil saint Manickavachagar has said of the specks dancing in a beam of sunlight, that if each represents a universe, the whole sunlight will represent the Supreme Being. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
99:Apart from the individual difficulty there is a general difficulty in the physical earth-nature. Physical nature is slow and inert and unwilling to change; its tendency is to be still and take long periods of time for a little progress. It is very difficult for even the strongest mental or vital or even psychic will to overcome this inertia. It is only by bringing down constantly the consciousness and force and light from above that it can be done. Therefore there must be a constant will and aspiration for that and for the change and it must be a steady and patient will not tired out even by the utmost resistance of the physical nature.
~ SATM?,#KEYS
100:As gnostic knowledge, will and ananda are a direct instrumentation of spirit and can only be won by growing into the spirit, into divine being, this growth has to be the first aim of our Yoga. The mental being has to enlarge itself into the oneness of the Divine before the Divine will perfect in the soul of the individual its gnostic outflowering. That is the reason why the triple way of knowledge, works and love becomes the key-note of the whole Yoga, for that is the direct means for the soul in mind to rise to its highest intensities where it passes upward into the divine oneness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
101:the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent,-it is not a contradiction or something quite other than it, it is the universal concentrated and selective, it is one with the Transcendent in its essence of being and its essence of nature. In the view of this unitarian comprehensive seeing there is nothing contradictory in a formless Essence of being that carries a multitude of forms, or in a status of the Infinite supporting a kinesis of the Infinite, or in an infinite Oneness expressing itself in a multiplicity of beings and aspects and powers and movements, for they are beings and aspects and powers and movements of the One.
~ SATM?,#KEYS
102:[the third aid, the inner guide, guru :::
It is he who destroys our darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent.~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 61 [T1],#KEYS
103:It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent Of The Sacrifice - I, [T1],#KEYS
104:For the Witness, if he exists, is not the individual embodied mind born in the world, but that cosmic Consciousness embracing the universe and appearing as an immanent Intelligence in all its works to which either world subsists eternally and really as Its own active existence or else from which it is born and into which it disappears by an act of knowledge or by an act of conscious power. Not organised mind, but that which, calm and eternal, broods equally in the living earth and the living human body and to which mind and senses are dis- pensable instruments, is the Witness of cosmic existence and its Lord. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.03, #KEYS
105:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#KEYS
106:There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the sacrifice has become acceptable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 61, [T0],#KEYS
107:The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form-all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #KEYS
108:This then is the first necessity, that the individual, each individual, shall discover the spirit, the divine reality within him and express that in all his being and living. A divine life must be first and foremost an inner life; for since the outward must be the expression of what is within, there can be no divinity in the outer existence if there is not the divinisation of the inner being.
The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre; there can be no such thing as self-exceeding for man or a higher issue for his existence if there is not in him the reality of an eternal self and spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.28 - The Divine Life,#KEYS
109:The person who has allowed himself to develop certain mental habits finds that attitudes can be just as much addiction as narcotics. Someone who would not under any conditions become an alcoholic can become so completely sickened by his own habitual negative thinking, that many people around him wish he would become alcoholic as the lesser of two evils. It is hard to cure an alcoholic, although Alcoholics Anonymous can do it sometimes; but the individual who falls too deeply into some of the traps of his own thinking is practically incurable because he has warped all perspective and has no real desire to make any change in himself. ~ Manly P Hall, (Change Yourself and You Change All 1969, p.7), #KEYS
110:Hermetic philosophy is complex and many-layered. At the heart, the Hermetics profess the drive to perfection. This drive manifests through trials, tests, self-discovery, and the rejoining of fragmented patterns like disparate languages or mathematical conundrums. Ideally, each individual has a Word, a divine imperative that drives the figure's revelations. By exploring the boundaries of that Word and all of its meanings, the individual rises to his inner nature, then beyond. Each step in the process is a challenge that requires a leap of perception but also opens the way to the next path. Eventually, the human passes far enough to become something cosmically divine. ~ Mage the Ascension, Order of Hermes, #KEYS
111:The human soul's individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual Yoga then turns from its separateness and becomes a part of the collective Yoga of the divine Nature in the human race. The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
112:We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, #KEYS
113:But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions Of The Synthesis, The Threefold Life, 29,#KEYS
114:The consciousness of the transcendent Absolute with its consequence in individual and universal is the last, the eternal knowledge. Our minds may deal with it on various lines, may build upon it conflicting philosophies, may limit, modify, overstress, understress sides of the knowledge, deduce from it truth or error; but our intellectual variations and imperfect statements make no difference to the ultimate fact that if we push thought and experience to their end, this is the knowledge in which they terminate. The object of a Yoga of spiritual knowledge can be nothing else than this eternal Reality, this Self, this Brahman, this Transcendent that dwells over all and in all and is manifest yet concealed in the individual, manifest yet disguised in the universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge.,#KEYS
115:Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujya-mukti, by which it can become free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
116:What we are desperately in need of today is for the individual to wake up in himself and realize that it is not necessary for him to be part of anything he does not approve of. It is not necessary for him to compromise. He may be penalized if he does not. If he does not follow the general way, he may be subject to certain criticism and discomfort, but he has to decide for himself whether these penalties are more important than character. He must decide whether it is better to get along with other people for a few years than it is to learn to get along with himself for the full duration of life. He must decide whether he wishes to make this compromise and be fashionable for a few years, and pay for it perhaps with ten years of lingering misery at the end of his life. He has to decide where his values are. ~ Manly P Hall, Accepting the Challenge of Maturity 1965, p. 13, #KEYS
117:The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, 50, [T9], #KEYS
118:... if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any great number of them, arbitrarily selected, is almost exactly uniform. Now let us suppose that such a vessel is divided into two portions, A and B, by a division in which there is a small hole, and that a being, who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes this hole, so as to allow only the swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature of B and lower that of A, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #KEYS
119:The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment. At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difficulties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill. A little trifling false step or mistake and they appear on the road and clap a whole Himalaya as a barrier across it. But this opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more powerful descent of the Divine Grace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
120:For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of ensuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. Metaphysical proofs are, however, not the only ones which we are able to bring forth in support of this idea. Science, too, recognizes this connectedness of separate individuals, though not quite in the same sense as it admits that the suns, planets, and moons of a constellation are one body, and there can be no doubt that it will be experimentally confirmed in times to come, when our means and methods for investigating psychical and other states and phenomena shall have been brought to great perfection. Still more: this one human being lives on and on. The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains. Therein lies the profound difference between the individual and the whole. ~ Nikola Tesla, #KEYS
121:Therefore, we can attain the overmental consciousness in many different ways: through religious passion, through poetic, intellectual, artistic, or heroic zeal, or through anything that helps man to exceed himself. - Sri Aurobindo assigned a special place to art, which he considered one of the major means of spiritual progress. Unfortunately, artists and creators too often have a considerable ego standing in the way, which is their main difficulty. The religious man, who has worked to dissolve his ego, finds it easier, but he rarely attains universality through his own individual efforts, leaping instead beyond the individual without bothering to develop all the intermediate rungs of the personal consciousness, and when he reaches the top he no longer has a ladder to come down, or he does not want to come down, or there is no individual self left to express what he sees, or else his old individual self tries its best to express his new consciousness, provided he feels the need to express anything at all.
~ Satprem,#KEYS
122:To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence. To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
123:The personal will of the sadhaka has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned, he has still to train them to recognise that always, always to accept, always to follow that. Progressing, he learns, still using the personal will, personal effort, personal energies, to employ them as representatives of the higher Power and in conscious obedience to the higher Influence. Progressing yet farther, his will, effort, energy become no longer personal and separate, but activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual. But there is still a sort of gulf or distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit, not always accurate, sometimes even very distorting, between the divine Origin and the emerging human current. At the end of the process, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, #KEYS
124:16. Master of Two Worlds:Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back-not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other-is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
125:THE PROGRESSIVE revelation of a great, a transcendent, a luminous Reality with the multitudinous relativities of this world that we see and those other worlds that we do not see as means and material, condition and field, this would seem then to be the meaning of the universe, - since meaning and aim it has and is neither a purposeless illusion nor a fortuitous accident.
For the same reasoning which leads us to conclude that world-existence is not a deceptive trick of Mind, justifies equally the certainty that it is no blindly and helplessly self-existent mass of separate phenomenal existences clinging together and struggling together as best they can in their orbit through eternity, no tremendous self-creation and self-impulsion of an ignorant Force without any secret Intelligence within aware of its starting-point and its goal and guiding its process and its motion.
An existence, wholly self-aware and therefore entirely master of itself, possesses the phenomenal being in which it is involved, realises itself in form, unfolds itself in the individual. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine 1.6-1,#KEYS
126:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother, one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience.
But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother, the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,#KEYS
127:five schools of yoga :::
For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in everybody and yet transcends all form and name.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
128:An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokyalmukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sadharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, p.47-8,#KEYS
129:all is the method of God's workings; all life is Yoga :::
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognize in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of the might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and there for right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Conditions of the Synthesis [47] [T1],#KEYS
130:For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, - of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.
It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 85-86, [T1],#KEYS
131:uniting life and Yoga :::
No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes. like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous withlife itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: All life is Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, Life and Yoga,#KEYS
132:Integral Psychology presents a very complex picture of the individual. As he did previously in The Atman Project, at the back of the book Wilber has included numerous charts showing how his model relates to the work of a hundred or so different authors from East and West.57
57. Wilber compares the models of Huston Smith, Plotinus, Buddhism, Stan Grof, John Battista, kundalini yoga, the Great Chain of Being, James Mark Baldwin, Aurobindo, the Kabbalah, Vedanta, William Tiller, Leadbeater, Adi Da, Piaget, Commons and Richards, Kurt Fisher, Alexander, Pascual-Leone, Herb Koplowitz, Patricia Arlin, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Jan Sinnot, Michael Basseches, Jane Loevinger, John Broughton, Sullivan, Grant and Grant, Jenny Wade, Michael Washburn, Erik Erikson, Neumann, Scheler, Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Steiner, Don Beck, Suzanne Cook-Greuter, Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, Kohlberg, Torbert, Blanchard-Fields, Kitchener and King, Deirdre Kramer, William Perry, Turner and Powell, Cheryl Armon, Peck, Howe, Rawls, Piaget, Selman, Gilligan, Hazrat Inayat Khan, mahamudra meditation, Fowler, Underhill, Helminiak, Funk, Daniel Brown, Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, St. Palamas, classical yoga, highest tantra yoga, St Teresa, Chirban, St Dionysius, Patanjali, St Gregory of Nyssa, transcendental meditation, Fortune, Maslow, Chinen, Benack, Gardner, Melvin Miller, Habermas, Jean Houston, G. Heard, Lenski, Jean Gebser, A. Taylor, Jay Early, Robert Bellah, and Duane Elgin. ~ Frank Visser, Ken Wilber Thought as Passion,#KEYS
133:Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help; we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
134:When, then, by the withdrawal of the centre of consciousness from identification with the mind, life and body, one has discovered ones true self, discovered the oneness of that self with the pure, silent, immutable Brahman, discovered in the immutable, in the Akshara Brahman, that by which the individual being escapes from his own personality into the impersonal, the first movement of the Path of Knowledge has been completed. It is the sole that is absolutely necessary for the traditional aim of the Yoga of Knowledge, for immergence, for escape from cosmic existence, for release into the absolute and ineffable Parabrahman who is beyond all cosmic being. The seeker of this ultimate release may take other realisations on his way, may realise the Lord of the universe, the Purusha who manifests Himself in all creatures, may arrive at the cosmic consciousness, may know and feel his unity with all beings; but these are only stages or circumstances of his journey, results of the unfolding of his soul as it approaches nearer the ineffable goal. To pass beyond them all is his supreme object. When on the other hand, having attained to the freedom and the silence and the peace, we resume possession by the cosmic consciousness of the active as well as the silent Brahman and can securely live in the divine freedom as well as rest in it, we have completed the second movement of the Path by which the integrality of self-knowledge becomes the station of the liberated soul.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
135:Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date, has access to all previous structures, all the way back to Archaic-and the Archaic itself, of course, has transcended and included, and now embraces, every major structural evolution going all the way back to the Big Bang. (A human being literally enfolds and embraces all the major transformative unfoldings of the entire Kosmic history-strings to quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to cells, all the way through the Tree of Life up to its latest evolutionary emergent, the triune brain, the most complex structure in the known natural world.) Supermind, in any given individual, is experienced as a type of omniscience-the supermind, since it transcends and includes all of the previous structure-rungs, and inherently is conjoined with the highest nondual Suchness state, has a full and complete knowledge of all of the potentials in that person. It literally knows all, at least for the individual.
~ Ken Wilber?,#KEYS
136:Karma Yoga, the Path of Works; :::
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 39,#KEYS
137:What is that work and result, if not a self-involution of Consciousness in form and a self-evolution out of form so as to actualise some mighty possibility in the universe which it has created? And what is its will in Man if not a will to unending Life, to unbounded Knowledge, to unfettered Power? Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality. The idea of limit, of the impossible begins to grow a little shadowy and it appears instead that whatever man constantly wills, he must in the end be able to do; for the consciousness in the race eventually finds the means. It is not in the individual that this omnipotence expresses itself, but the collective Will of mankind that works out with the individual as a means. And yet when we look more deeply, it is not any conscious Will of the collectivity, but a superconscious Might that uses the individual as a centre and means, the collectivity as a condition and field. What is this but the God in man, the infinite Identity, the multitudinous Unity, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, who having made man in His own image, with the ego as a centre of working, with the race, the collective Narayana, the visvamanava as the mould and circumscription, seeks to express in them some image of the unity, omniscience, omnipotence which are the self-conception of the Divine?
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
138:The second condition of consciousness is potential only to the human being and gained by an inner enlightening and transformation of the mind of ignorance; it is that in which the mind seeks for its source of knowledge rather within than without and becomes to its own feeling and self-experience, by whatever means, a mind, not of original ignorance, but of self-forgetful knowledge. This mind is conscious that the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the being, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and known at once to be true, - each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure. This is its attitude to knowledge even when the occasion of knowing is some external experience, sign or indication, because that is to it only the occasion and its reliance for the truth of the knowledge is not on the external indication or evidence but on the inner confirming witness. The true mind is the universal within us and the individual is only a projection on the surface, and therefore this second state of consciousness we have either when the individual mind goes more and more inward and is always consciously or subconsciously near and sensitive to the touches of the universal mentality in which all is contained, received, capable of being made manifest, or, still more powerfully, when we live in the consciousness of universal mind with the personal mentality only as a projection, a marking board or a communicating switch on the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, 887, #KEYS
139:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #KEYS
140:8. We all recognize the Universe must have been thought into shape before it ever could have become a material fact. And if we are willing to follow along the lines of the Great Architect of the Universe, we shall find our thoughts taking form, just as the universe took concrete form. It is the same mind operating through the individual. There is no difference in kind or quality, the only difference is one of degree.
9. The architect visualizes his building, he sees it as he wishes it to be. His thought becomes a plastic mold from which the building will eventually emerge, a high one or a low one, a beautiful one or a plain one, his vision takes form on paper and eventually the necessary material is utilized and the building stands complete.
10. The inventor visualizes his idea in exactly the same manner, for instance, Nikola Tesla, he with the giant intellect, one of the greatest inventors of all ages, the man who has brought forth the most amazing realities, always visualizes his inventions before attempting to work them out. He did not rush to embody them in form and then spend his time in correcting defects. Having first built up the idea in his imagination, he held it there as a mental picture, to be reconstructed and improved by his thought. "In this way," he writes in the Electrical Experimenter. "I am enabled to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of, and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete, the product of my brain. Invariably my devise works as I conceived it should; in twenty years there has not been a single exception. ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
141:The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this mental being, this mental consciousness working as mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal either with life in general or with his own life in a really effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter in order to be master of the material environment, to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind in order to be master of the great obscure movement of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master of himself, to know the world in order to be master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world in which He expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
142:The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2.15, #KEYS
143:the aim of our yoga :::
The aim set before our Yoga is nothing less than to hasten this supreme object of our existence here. Its process leaves behind the ordinary tardy method of slow and confused growth through the evolution of Nature. For the natural evolution is at its best an uncertain growth under cover, partly by the pressure of the environment, partly by a groping education and an ill-lighted purposeful effort, an only partially illumined and half-automatic use of opportunities with many blunders and lapses and relapses; a great portion of it is made up of apparent accidents and circumstances and vicissitudes, - though veiling a secret divine intervention and guidance. In Yoga we replace this confused crooked crab-motion by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution which is planned to carry us, as far as can be, in a straight line towards the goal set before us. In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal, an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of a new birth; there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force - and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this new birth that we make our aim: a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, 89-90,#KEYS
144:When a corner of Maya, the illusion of individual life, is lifted before the eyes of a man in such sort that he no longer makes any egoistic difference between his own person and other men, that he takes as much interest in the sufferings of others as in his own and that he becomes succourable to the point of devotion, ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, then that man is able to recognise himself in all beings, considers as his own the infinite sufferings of all that lives and must thus appropriate to himself the sorrow of the world. No distress is alien to him. All the torments which he sees and can so rarely soften, all the torments of which he hears, those even which it is impossible for him to conceive, strike his spirit as if he were himself the victim. Insensible to the alternations of weal and woe which succeed each other in his destiny, delivered from all egoism, he penetrates the veils of the individual illusion : all that lives, all that suffers is equally near to his heart. He conceives the totality of things, their essence, their eternal flux, the vain efforts, the internal struggles and sufferings without end ; he sees to whatever side he turns his gaze man who suffers, the animal who suffers and a world that is eternally passing away. He unites himself henceforth to the sorrows of the world as closely as the egoist to his own person. How can he having such a knowledge of the world affirm by incessant desires his will to live, attach himself more and more to life and clutch it to him always more closely ? The man seduced by the illusion of individual life, a slave of his egoism, sees only the things that touch him personally and draws from them incessantly renewed motives to desire and to will : on the contrary one who penetrates the essence of things and dominates their totality, elevates himself to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation and true tranquillity. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
145:the omnipresent Trinity :::
In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,-God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
146:Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge; :::
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara ¯, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems Of Yoga, 38,#KEYS
147:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
148:The one high and reasonable course for the individual human being, - unless indeed he is satisfied with pursuing his personal purposes or somehow living his life until it passes out of him, - is to study the laws of the Becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise, rationally or intuitionally, inwardly or in the dynamism of life, its potentialities in himself or for himself or in or for the race of which he is a member; his business is to make the most of such actualities as exist and to seize on or to advance towards the highest possibilities that can be developed here or are in the making. Only mankind as a whole can do this with entire effect, by the mass of individual and collective action, in the process of time, in the evolution of the race experience: but the individual man can help towards it in his own limits, can do all these things for himself to a certain extent in the brief space of life allotted to him; but, especially, his thought and action can be a contribution towards the present intellectual, moral and vital welfare and the future progress of the race. He is capable of a certain nobility of being; an acceptance of his inevitable and early individual annihilation does not preclude him from making a high use of the will and thought which have been developed in him or from directing them to great ends which shall or may be worked out by humanity. Even the temporary character of the collective being of humanity does not so very much matter, - except in the most materialist view of existence; for so long as the universal Becoming takes the form of human body and mind, the thought, the will it has developed in its human creature will work itself out and to follow that intelligently is the natural law and best rule of human life. Humanity and its welfare and progress during its persistence on earth provide the largest field and the natural limits for the terrestrial aim of our being; the superior persistence of the race and the greatness and importance of the collective life should determine the nature and scope of our ideals. But if the progress or welfare of humanity be excluded as not our business or as a delusion, the individual is there; to achieve his greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his nature demands will then be life's significance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, [T1],#KEYS
149:the three stages of the ascent :::
There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,#KEYS
150:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.
There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,#KEYS
151:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218, #KEYS
152:The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga, 36,#KEYS
153:If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works, yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery. There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable, but this reason in things, when closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance, it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours and a phantasy which baffles our imagination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.02, #KEYS
154:The Absolute is in itself indefinable by reason, ineffable to the speech; it has to be approached through experience. It can be approached through an absolute negation of existence, as if it were itself a supreme Non-Existence, a mysterious infinite Nihil. It can be approached through an absolute affirmation of all the fundamentals of our own existence, through an absolute of Light and Knowledge, through an absolute of Love or Beauty, through an absolute of Force, through an absolute of peace or silence. It can be approached through an inexpressible absolute of being or of consciousness, or of power of being, or of delight of being, or through a supreme experience in which these things become inexpressibly one; for we can enter into such an ineffable state and, plunged into it as if into a luminous abyss of existence, we can reach a superconscience which may be described as the gate of the Absolute. It is supposed that it is only through a negation of individual and cosmos that we can enter into the Absolute. But in fact the individual need only deny his own small separate ego-existence; he can approach the Absolute through a sublimation of his spiritual individuality taking up the cosmos into himself and transcending it; or he may negate himself altogether, but even so it is still the individual who by self-exceeding enters into the Absolute. He may enter also by a sublimation of his being into a supreme existence or super-existence, by a sublimation of his consciousness into a supreme consciousness or superconscience, by a sublimation of his and all delight of being into a super-delight or supreme ecstasy. He can make the approach through an ascension in which he enters into cosmic consciousness, assumes it into himself and raises himself and it into a state of being in which oneness and multiplicity are in perfect harmony and unison in a supreme status of manifestation where all are in each and each in all and all in the one without any determining individuation - for the dynamic identity and mutuality have become complete; on the path of affirmation it is this status of the manifestation that is nearest to the Absolute. This paradox of an Absolute which can be realised through an absolute negation and through an absolute affirmation, in many ways, can only be accounted for to the reason if it is a supreme Existence which is so far above our notion and experience of existence that it can correspond to our negation of it, to our notion and experience of nonexistence; but also, since all that exists is That, whatever its degree of manifestation, it is itself the supreme of all things and can be approached through supreme affirmations as through supreme negations. The Absolute is the ineffable x overtopping and underlying and immanent and essential in all that we can call existence or non-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #KEYS
155:Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can be also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it. ... Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other ways.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head in only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental concentration is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the most desirable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
156:Something happened to you before you were born, and this is what it was:
STAGE ONE: THE CHIKHAI
The events of the 49-day Bardo period are divided into three major stages, the Chikhai, the Chonyid, and the Sidpa (in that order). Immediately following physical death, the soul enters the Chikhai, which is simply the state of the immaculate and luminous Dharmakaya, the ultimate Consciousness, the BrahmanAtman. This ultimate state is given, as a gift, to all individuals: they are plunged straight into ultimate reality and exist as the ultimate Dharmakaya. "At this moment," says the Bardo Thotrol, "the first glimpsing of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharmakaya, is experienced by all sentient beings.''110 Or, to put it a different way, the Thotrol tells us that "Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light-Buddha Amitabha. Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood ... is to keep thyself in the Divine Mind."110 In short, immediately following physical death, the soul is absorbed in and as the ultimate-causal body (if we may treat them together).
Interspersed with this brief summary of the Bardo Thotrol, I will add my commentaries on involution and on the nature of the Atman project in involution. And we begin by noting that at the start of the Bardo experience, the soul is elevated to the utter heights of Being, to the ultimate state of Oneness-that is, he starts his Bardo career at the top. But, at the top is usually not where he remains, and the Thotrol tells us why. In Evans-Wentz's words, "In the realm of the Clear Light [the highest Chikhai stage] the mentality of a person . . . momentarily enjoys a condition of balance, of perfect equilibrium, and of [ultimate] oneness. Owing to unfamiliarity with such a state, which is an ecstatic state of non-ego, of [causal] consciousness, the . . . average human being lacks the power to function in it; karmic propensities becloud the consciousness-principle with thoughts of personality, of individualized being, of dualism, and, losing equilibrium, the consciousness-principle falls away from the Clear Light."
The soul falls away from the ultimate Oneness because "karmic propensities cloud consciousness"-"karmic propensities'' means seeking, grasping, desiring; means, in fact, Eros. And as this Erosseeking develops, the state of perfect Oneness starts to "break down" (illusorily). Or, from a different angle, because the individual cannot stand the intensity of pure Oneness ("owing to unfamiliarity with such a state"), he contracts away from it, tries to ''dilute it," tries to extricate himself from Perfect Intensity in Atman. Contracting in the face of infinity, he turns instead to forms of seeking, desire, karma, and grasping, trying to "search out" a state of equilibrium. Contraction and Eros-these karmic propensities couple and conspire to drive the soul away from pure consciousness and downwards into multiplicity, into less intense and less real states of being. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project,#KEYS
157:Talk 26
...
D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?
M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.
D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?
M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).
Talk 27.
D.: How are they practised?
M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.
In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,#KEYS
158:Can it be said in justification of one's past that whatever has happened in one's life had to happen?
The Mother: Obviously, what has happened had to happen; it would not have been, if it had not been intended. Even the mistakes that we have committed and the adversities that fell upon us had to be, because there was some necessity in them, some utility for our lives. But in truth these things cannot be explained mentally and should not be. For all that happened was necessary, not for any mental reason, but to lead us to something beyond what the mind imagines. But is there any need to explain after all? The whole universe explains everything at every moment and a particular thing happens because the whole universe is what it is. But this does not mean that we are bound over to a blind acquiescence in Nature's inexorable law. You can accept the past as a settled fact and perceive the necessity in it, and still you can use the experience it gave you to build up the power consciously to guide and shape your present and your future.
Is the time also of an occurrence arranged in the Divine Plan of things?
The Mother: All depends upon the plane from which one sees and speaks. There is a plane of divine consciousness in which all is known absolutely, and the whole plan of things foreseen and predetermined. That way of seeing lives in the highest reaches of the Supramental; it is the Supreme's own vision. But when we do not possess that consciousness, it is useless to speak in terms that hold good only in that region and are not our present effective way of seeing things. For at a lower level of consciousness nothing is realised or fixed beforehand; all is in the process of making. Here there are no settled facts, there is only the play of possibilities; out of the clash of possibilities is realised the thing that has to happen. On this plane we can choose and select; we can refuse one possibility and accept another; we can follow one path, turn away from another. And that we can do, even though what is actually happening may have been foreseen and predetermined in a higher plane.
The Supreme Consciousness knows everything beforehand, because everything is realised there in her eternity. But for the sake of her play and in order to carry out actually on the physical plane what is foreordained in her own supreme self, she moves here upon earth as if she did not know the whole story; she works as if it was a new and untried thread that she was weaving. It is this apparent forgetfulness of her own foreknowledge in the higher consciousness that gives to the individual in the active life of the world his sense of freedom and independence and initiative. These things in him are her pragmatic tools or devices, and it is through this machinery that the movements and issues planned and foreseen elsewhere are realised here.
It may help you to understand if you take the example of an actor. An actor knows the whole part he has to play; he has in his mind the exact sequence of what is to happen on the stage. But when he is on the stage, he has to appear as if he did not know anything; he has to feel and act as if he were experiencing all these things for the first time, as if it was an entirely new world with all its chance events and surprises that was unrolling before his eyes. 28th April ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
159:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
160:
"The beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne d'Arc would, if seen by an Indian, have quite a different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of one's mind.... You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother; the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; and others would give other names. It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (21 April 1929)
And then? You are not very talkative today! Is that all?
You say that "each person has his own world of dreamimagery peculiar to himself." Ibid.
Each individual has his own way of expressing, thinking, speaking, feeling, understanding. It is the combination of all these ways of being that makes the individual. That is why everyone can understand only according to his own nature. As long as you are shut up in your own nature, you can know only what is in your consciousness. All depends upon the height of the nature of your consciousness. Your world is limited to what you have in your consciousness. If you have a very small consciousness, you will understand only a few things. When your consciousness is very vast, universal, only then will you understand the world. If the consciousness is limited to your little ego, all the rest will escape you.... There are people whose brain and consciousness are smaller than a walnut. You know that a walnut resembles the brain; well these people look at things and don't understand them. They can understand nothing else except what is in direct contact with their senses. For them only what they taste, what they see, hear, touch has a reality, and all the rest simply does not exist, and they accuse us of speaking fancifully! "What I cannot touch does not exist", they say. But the only answer to give them is: "It does not exist for you, but there's no reason why it shouldn't exist for others." You must not insist with these people, and you must not forget that the smaller they are the greater is the audacity in their assertions.
One's cocksureness is in proportion to one's unconsciousness; the more unconscious one is, the more is one sure of oneself. The most foolish are always the most vain. Your stupidity is in proportion to your vanity. The more one knows... In fact, there is a time when one is quite convinced that one knows nothing at all. There's not a moment in the world which does not bring something new, for the world is perpetually growing. If one is conscious of that, one has always something new to learn. But one can become conscious of it only gradually. One's conviction that one knows is in direct proportion to one's ignorance and stupidity.
Mother, have the scientists, then, a very small consciousness?
Why? All scientists are not like that. If you meet a true scientist who has worked hard, he will tell you: "We know nothing. What we know today is nothing beside what we shall know tomorrow. This year's discoveries will be left behind next year." A real scientist knows very well that there are many more things he doesn't know than those he knows. And this is true of all branches of human activity. I have never met a scientist worthy of the name who was proud. I have never met a man of some worth who has told me: "I know everything." Those I have seen have always confessed: "In short, I know nothing." After having spoken of all that he has done, all that he has achieved, he tells you very quietly: "After all, I know nothing." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T8],#KEYS
161:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,#KEYS
162:There is a true movement of the intellect and there is a wrong movement: one helps, the other hinders." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (5 May 1929)
What is the true movement of the intellect?
What exactly do you understand by intellect? Is it a function of the mind or is it a part of the human being? How do you understand it?
A function of the mind.
A function of the mind? Then it is that part of the mind which deals with ideas; is that what you mean?
Not ideas, Mother.
Not ideas? What else, then?
Ideas, but...
There is a part of the mind which receives ideas, ideas that are formed in a higher mind. Still, I don't know, it is a question of definition and one must know what exactly you mean to say.
It is intellect that puts ideas in the form of thoughts, gathering and organising the thoughts at the same time. There are great ideas which lie beyond the ordinary human mentality, which can put on all possible forms. These great ideas tend to descend, they want to manifest themselves in precise forms. These precise forms are the thoughts; and generally it is this, I believe, that is meant by intellect: it is this that gives thought-form to the ideas.
And then, there is also the organisation of the thoughts among themselves. All that has to be put in a certain order, otherwise one becomes incoherent. And after that, there is the putting of these thoughts to use for action; that is still another movement.
To be able to say what the true movement is, one must know first of all which movement is being spoken about. You have a body, well, you don't expect your body to walk on its head or its hands nor to crawl flat on its belly nor indeed that the head should be down and the legs up in the air. You give to each limb a particular occupation which is its own. This appears to you quite natural because that is the habit; otherwise, the very little ones do not know what to do, neither with their legs nor with their hands nor with their heads; it is only little by little that they learn that. Well, it is the same thing with the mind's functions. You must know which part of the mind you are speaking about, what its own function is, and then only can you say what its true movement is and what is not its true movement. For example, for the part which has to receive the master ideas and change them into thought, its true movement is to be open to the master ideas, receive them and change them into as exact, as precise, as expressive a thought as possible. For the part of the mind which has the charge of organising all these thoughts among themselves so that they might form a coherent and classified whole, not a chaos, the true movement is just to make the classification according to a higher logic and in a thoroughly clear, precise and expressive order which may be serviceable each time a thought is referred to, so that one may know where to look for it and not put quite contradictory things together. There are people whose mind does not work like that; all the ideas that come into it, without their being even aware of what the idea is, are translated into confused thoughts which remain in a kind of inner chaos. I have known people who, from the philosophical point of view - although there is nothing philosophical in it - could put side by side the most contradictory things, like ideas of hierarchic order and at the same time ideas of the absolute independence of the individual and of anarchism, and both were accepted with equal sympathy, knocked against each other in the head in the midst of a wild disorder, and these people were not even aware of it!... You know the saying: "A question well put is three-fourths solved." So now, put your question. What do you want to speak about? I am stretching out a helping hand, you have only to catch it. What is it you are speaking about, what is it that you call intellect? Do you know the difference between an idea and a thought?
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 107,#KEYS
163:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#KEYS
164:Although a devout student of the Bible, Paracelsus instinctively adopted the broad patterns of essential learning, as these had been clarified by Pythagoras of Samos and Plato of Athens. Being by nature a mystic as well as a scientist, he also revealed a deep regard for the Neoplatonic philosophy as expounded by Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Neoplatonism is therefore an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the Paracelsian doctrine.
Paracelsus held that true knowledge is attained in two ways, or rather that the pursuit of knowledge is advanced by a two-fold method, the elements of which are completely interdependent. In our present terminology, we can say that these two parts of method are intuition and experience. To Paracelsus, these could never be divided from each other.
The purpose of intuition is to reveal certain basic ideas which must then be tested and proven by experience. Experience, in turn, not only justifies intuition, but contributes certain additional knowledge by which the impulse to further growth is strengthened and developed. Paracelsus regarded the separation of intuition and experience to be a disaster, leading inevitably to greater error and further disaster. Intuition without experience allows the mind to fall into an abyss of speculation without adequate censorship by practical means. Experience without intuition could never be fruitful because fruitfulness comes not merely from the doing of things, but from the overtones which stimulate creative thought. Further, experience is meaningless unless there is within man the power capable of evaluating happenings and occurrences. The absence of this evaluating factor allows the individual to pass through many kinds of experiences, either misinterpreting them or not inter preting them at all. So Paracelsus attempted to explain intuition and how man is able to apprehend that which is not obvious or apparent. Is it possible to prove beyond doubt that the human being is capable of an inward realization of truths or facts without the assistance of the so-called rational faculty?
According to Paracelsus, intuition was possible because of the existence in nature of a mysterious substance or essence-a universal life force. He gave this many names, but for our purposes, the simplest term will be appropriate. He compared it to light, further reasoning that there are two kinds of light: a visible radiance, which he called brightness, and an invisible radiance, which he called darkness. There is no essential difference between light and darkness. There is a dark light, which appears luminous to the soul but cannot be sensed by the body. There is a visible radiance which seems bright to the senses, but may appear dark to the soul. We must recognize that Paracelsus considered light as pertaining to the nature of being, the total existence from which all separate existences arise. Light not only contains the energy needed to support visible creatures, and the whole broad expanse of creation, but the invisible part of light supports the secret powers and functions of man, particularly intuition. Intuition, therefore, relates to the capacity of the individual to become attuned to the hidden side of life. By light, then, Paracelsus implies much more than the radiance that comes from the sun, a lantern, or a candle. To him, light is the perfect symbol, emblem, or figure of total well-being. Light is the cause of health. Invisible light, no less real if unseen, is the cause of wisdom. As the light of the body gives strength and energy, sustaining growth and development, so the light of the soul bestows understanding, the light of the mind makes wisdom possible, and the light of the spirit confers truth. Therefore, truth, wisdom, understanding, and health are all manifesta tions or revelations ot one virtue or power. What health is to the body, morality is to the emotions, virtue to the soul, wisdom to the mind, and reality to the spirit. This total content of living values is contained in every ray of visible light. This ray is only a manifestation upon one level or plane of the total mystery of life. Therefore, when we look at a thing, we either see its objective, physical form, or we apprehend its inner light Everything that lives, lives in light; everything that has an existence, radiates light. All things derive their life from light, and this light, in its root, is life itself. This, indeed, is the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world. ~ Manly P Hall, Paracelsus,#KEYS
165:summary of the entire process of psychic awakening :::
You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other then the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it an d all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and it the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it behind to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental consciousness is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of the discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty - there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, bring the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us - inner mental, inner vital, inner physical - silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can being with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring above what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 6, {871},#KEYS
166:Education
THE EDUCATION of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his life.
Indeed, if we want this education to have its maximum result, it should begin even before birth; in this case it is the mother herself who proceeds with this education by means of a twofold action: first, upon herself for her own improvement, and secondly, upon the child whom she is forming physically. For it is certain that the nature of the child to be born depends very much upon the mother who forms it, upon her aspiration and will as well as upon the material surroundings in which she lives. To see that her thoughts are always beautiful and pure, her feelings always noble and fine, her material surroundings as harmonious as possible and full of a great simplicity - this is the part of education which should apply to the mother herself. And if she has in addition a conscious and definite will to form the child according to the highest ideal she can conceive, then the very best conditions will be realised so that the child can come into the world with his utmost potentialities. How many difficult efforts and useless complications would be avoided in this way!
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.
We propose to study these five aspects of education one by one and also their interrelationships. But before we enter into the details of the subject, I wish to make a recommendation to parents. Most parents, for various reasons, give very little thought to the true education which should be imparted to children. When they have brought a child into the world, provided him with food, satisfied his various material needs and looked after his health more or less carefully, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they will send him to school and hand over to the teachers the responsibility for his education.
There are other parents who know that their children must be educated and who try to do what they can. But very few, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate a child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one never sets a bad example to one's child. For it is above all through example that education becomes effective. To speak good words and to give wise advice to a child has very little effect if one does not oneself give him an example of what one teaches. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches. Parents, have a high ideal and always act in accordance with it and you will see that little by little your child will reflect this ideal in himself and spontaneously manifest the qualities you would like to see expressed in his nature. Quite naturally a child has respect and admiration for his parents; unless they are quite unworthy, they will always appear to their child as demigods whom he will try to imitate as best he can.
With very few exceptions, parents are not aware of the disastrous influence that their own defects, impulses, weaknesses and lack of self-control have on their children. If you wish to be respected by a child, have respect for yourself and be worthy of respect at every moment. Never be authoritarian, despotic, impatient or ill-tempered. When your child asks you a question, do not give him a stupid or silly answer under the pretext that he cannot understand you. You can always make yourself understood if you take enough trouble; and in spite of the popular saying that it is not always good to tell the truth, I affirm that it is always good to tell the truth, but that the art consists in telling it in such a way as to make it accessible to the mind of the hearer. In early life, until he is twelve or fourteen, the child's mind is hardly open to abstract notions and general ideas. And yet you can train it to understand these things by using concrete images, symbols or parables. Up to quite an advanced age and for some who mentally always remain children, a narrative, a story, a tale well told teach much more than any number of theoretical explanations.
Another pitfall to avoid: do not scold your child without good reason and only when it is quite indispensable. A child who is too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and no longer attaches much importance to words or severity of tone. And above all, take good care never to scold him for a fault which you yourself commit. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers; they soon find out your weaknesses and note them without pity.
When a child has done something wrong, see that he confesses it to you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, with kindness and affection make him understand what was wrong in his movement so that he will not repeat it, but never scold him; a fault confessed must always be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to come between you and your child; fear is a pernicious means of education: it invariably gives birth to deceit and lying. Only a discerning affection that is firm yet gentle and an adequate practical knowledge will create the bonds of trust that are indispensable for you to be able to educate your child effectively. And do not forget that you have to control yourself constantly in order to be equal to your task and truly fulfil the duty which you owe your child by the mere fact of having brought him into the world.
Bulletin, February 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
167:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
168:The Supreme Discovery
IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
The ancient traditions rightly said:
"Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
On this a sage has said:
"I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 2:It is only to the individual that a soul is given. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 3:The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 4:Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 5:I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 6:If we want to change the society, we have to change the individual. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 7:All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 8:Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 9:The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 10:In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 11:Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 12:The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 13:Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 14:The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 15:The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness. ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove 16:The value of the individual does not lie in him. He receives it by union with Christ. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 17:“What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 18:The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 19:“An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 20:It should be the right of the individual to decide whether he wants to belong to a union. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 21:The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 22:Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 23:Yoga believes in transforming the individual before transforming the world. ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove 24:Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 25:The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 26:The valuable person in any business is the individual who can and will cooperate with others. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 27:Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 28:With freedom goes responsibility, a responsibility that can only be met by the individual himself. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 29:For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind? ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 30:Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual." ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 31:The individual with a negative mental attitude attracts troubles as a magnet attracts steel fittings. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 32:The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 33:This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 34:... the right of the individual to elect freely the manner of his care in illness must be preserved. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 35:It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 36:The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 37:Perseverance and tact are the two most important qualities for the individual who wants to move ahead. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 38:I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 39:The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 40:To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 41:All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 42:The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 43:The individual who is mistake-free is also probably sitting around doing nothing. And that is a very big mistake. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 44:The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 45:As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 46:The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 47:A pure heart does not demean the spirit of an individual, it, instead, compels the individual to examine his spirit. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 48:Every collection reflects the ideas andvalues and interests of the individual or group who developed the collection. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 49:When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 50:It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 51:The development of the individual can be described as a succession of new births at consecutively higher levels. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 52:A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 53:Faith cannot be inherited or gained by being baptized into a Church. Faith is a matter between the individual and God. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 54:When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 55:To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 56:The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 57:The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 58:The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 59:It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 60:The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 61:Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 62:Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 63:Revenues should be increased not by increasing the tax rates on the individual but by building a bigger economy for everybody. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 64:The real genius to make a marketplace flourish doesn't come from the government. It comes from the individual genius of its people. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 65:All personal achievement starts within the mind of the individual-knowing your problem is the first step in finding the solution. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 66:Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 67:The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 68:Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 69:In a rural society communities are "given" for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 70:The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 71:Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 72:The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it. ~ eleanor-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 73:I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 74:Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 75:Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 76:I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 77:Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 78:Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 79:I believe love to be hurtful to society, and to the individual happiness of men. I believe, in short, that love does more harm than good. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 80:Realization doesn't destroy the individual any more than the reflection of the moon breaks a drop of water. A drop of water can reflect the whole sky. ~ dogen, @wisdomtrove 81:The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 82:Self-knowledge is the basis of jeet kune do because it is effective not only for the individual's martial art but also for his life as a human being. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 83:Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 84:The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter. ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove 85:Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 86:Choose to be who you are. . . The individual who would become a person must at some point take over his entire being - must, that is, choose herself. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 87:It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded. ~ eleanor-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 88:Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 89:No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 90:The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 91:The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 92:A business enterprise must continue beyond the lifetime of the individual or of the generation to be capable of producing its contributions to economy and to society. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 93:the philosophical conception of a Universal Mind, or World Soul, in which the individual minds or souls are but centres of activity, or units of expression. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 94:By shifting the balance away from the individual we open the door for the individual. Because we make it obvious that anyone can do it given the right circumstance. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 95:Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 96:There is only that inevitable danger as long as there is lack of understanding; but the moment the individual understands, there will be no formation of religion. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 97:The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 98:Where else, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all-including his own career-for the national good? ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 99:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 100:The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 101:I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 102:Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 103:The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won't in the end affirm or deny anything ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 104:The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 105:When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 106:Training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual for participation. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 107:Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 108:You can take power from others; you can steal it. It is not a very high-grade power. It will give you a certain amount of access to a better life; but it corrupts the individual. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 109:Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 110:Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. The best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 111:The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 112:All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. Your personal achievement starts in your mind. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal or desire is. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 113:The individual problem is the world problem. Therefore let us return to the problem of individual perfection and the establishing of peace in the heart and in the mind of the individual. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 114:One possessing Vairagya does not understand by Atman the individual ego but the All-pervading Lord, residing as the Self and Internal Ruler in all. He is perceivable by all as the sum total. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 115:The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 116:The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 117:The confidence that God is mindful of the individual is of tremendous value in dealing with the disease of fear, for it gives us a sense of worth, of belonging, and of at homeness in the universe. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 118:A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 119:Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 120:The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 121:Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 122:Every single life only becomes great when the individual sets upon a goal or goals which they really believe in, which they can really commit themselves to, which they can put their whole heart and soul into. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 123:Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 124:The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 125:There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 126:The individual spirit, which is You, is constantly at work manifesting its Creative Power, playing upon Material Substance, working upon and “working up” this Plastic Medium by the power of your Will. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 127:No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 128:It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 129:Solitude is so necessary both for society and for the individual that when society fails to provide sufficient solitude to develop the inner life of the persons who compose it, they rebel and seek false solitudes. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 130:Transformation al leaders pick the right people, match them to the right jobs, achieve mutual clarity on the desired results, and then they get out of the way and leave the individual with maximum freedom to perform. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 131:Because someone is a lama or is part of a monastic order or claims to be part of a succession, doesn't really mean they know anything. Always examine the individual's consciousness, their ability to transmit light. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 132:We can arrive at a point of view where the preservation of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness or our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 133:I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 134:Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 135:I don't necessarily have to like my players and associates but as their leader I must love them. Love is loyalty, love is teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. This is the strength of any organization. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 136:When the concept of human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the Cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest sense. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 137:Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 138:It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 139:All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 140:Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 141:My contention is that it is impossible to limit Truth, for that would mean that you were stepping down the Truth to the individual, who is limited. It would be useless to lay down a crystallized method for everyone to follow. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 142:Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions-as in moral truth and accountability they are. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 143:The individual who has been liberated by reason is always running head-on into a world, a society, whose past in the shape of & 144:My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality - in the individual. All are one and the One is all. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 145:The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 146:In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for & 147:Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 148:The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career! ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 149:I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 150:In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 151:As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 152:Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The creative process is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 153:Question: Since the will of the individual is illusory and one does not know God's will, how can one lead a purposeful life in this world. Ma: By contemplating the Self, one will find out. It is man's principal duty to aspire to Self-realization. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 154:As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 155:But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 156:In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 157:I direct my attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and I call upon men to make themselves conscious of this divinity within. That is really the ideal -conscious or unconscious -of every religion. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 158:No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.". ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 159:Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 160:Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 161:While recognizing that the universe is but an illusion, and life but a puppet-show, he remembers that if God is all there is, then the individual must be a part of or phase of God— and toward the union with God he bends all his soul and life. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 162:The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 163:In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 164:When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 165:Yoga believes in transforming the individual before transforming the world. Whatever change we want to happen outside should happen within. If you walk in peace and express that peace in your very life, others will see you and learn something. ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove 166:With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there is one individual who is not being considered at all, and that is the one who is being aborted. And I have noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 167:And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 168:Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 169:Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually cultivates it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone. ~ m-scott-peck, @wisdomtrove 170:The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 171:The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 172:“Immortality is one of the great spiritual needs of man. The churches have constituted themselves the official guardians of the need, with the result that some of them actually pretend to accord or to withhold it from the individual by their conventional sacraments.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 173:It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 174:Although it is difficult to pinpoint the physical base or location of awareness, it is perhaps the most precious thing concealed within our brains. And it is something that the individual alone can feel and experience. Each of us cherishes it highly, yet it is private. ~ dalai-lama, @wisdomtrove 175:Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 176:The primal awareness is unconsciously dreaming up the universe, and it becomes conscious through the individual beings it imagines itself to be. I am the primal awareness conscious through Tim. And so, through Tim, the primal awareness has the experience of conscious choice. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 177:Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 178:If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind? ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 179:The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 180:In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 181:Every soul and spirit has some degree of continuity with the universal spirit, which is recognized to be located not only where the individual soul lives and perceives, but also to be spread out everywhere in its essence and substance, as many Platonists and Pythagoreans have taught. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 182:Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 183:Generally speaking, among sensible persons, it would seem that a rich man deems that friend a sincere one who does not want to borrow his money; while, among the less favored with fortune's gifts, the sincere friend is generally esteemed to be the individual who is ready to lend it. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 184:The wolf of love sees a vast horizon, with all beings included in the circle of us. That circle shrinks down for the wolf of hate, so that only the nation, or tribe, or friends and family—or, in the extreme, only the individual self—is held as us, surrounded by threatening masses of them. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 185:As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 186:The individual needs the return to spiritual values, for he can survive in the present human situation only by reaffirming that man is not just a biological and psychological being but also a spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for the purposes of his Creator and subject to Him. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 187:Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 188:The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 189:It is that the individual has within him or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering the self-concept basic attitudes, and his or her self-directed behavior - and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 190:As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who's going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have [it] if he wants protection - the protection of a weapon in his home. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 191:Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove 192:If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 193:We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 194:Each of us must make the effort to contribute to the best of our ability according to our individual talents. And then we put all the individual talents together for the highest good of the group. Understanding that the good of the group comes first is fundamental to being a highly productive member of a team. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 195:Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 196:We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual, andis an affair of the individual and the household, a ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of the kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath, and the last. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 197:“This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 198:Approval is a greater motivator than disapproval, but we have to disapprove on occasion when we correct. It’s necessary. I make corrections only after I have proved to the individual that I highly value him. If they know we care for them, our correction won’t be seen as judgmental. I also try to never make it personal. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 199:Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 200:If there were, it would mean that the discovery of the Real depends on the efforts of the individual. The Supreme would not be the Supreme if He were subject to anything at all. He and He alone is at all times. To wear out the veil that occludes the vision of Reality is all that man can do, and that he has got to do. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 201:By assigning his political rights to the state the individual also delegates his social responsibilities to it: he asks the state to relieve him of the burden of caring for the poor precisely as he asks for protection against criminals. The difference between pauper and criminal disappears - both stand outside society. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 202:The reaction to any word may be, in an individual, either a mob-reaction or an individual reaction. It is up to the individual to ask himself: Is my reaction individual, or am I merely reacting from my mob-self? When it comes to the so-called obscene words, I should say that hardly one person in a million escapes mob-reaction. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 203:Peace is not just the absence of war and conflict; it goes well beyond that. Peace must be fostered within the individual, within the family and within society. Simply transferring the world's nuclear weapons to a museum will not in itself bring about world peace. The nuclear weapons of the mind must first be eliminated. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 204:She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 205:If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged ‚Äúgood‚Äù can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 206:In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 207:Society is to the individual what the sun and showers are to the seed. It develops him, expands him, unfolds him, calls him out of himself. Other men are his opportunity. Each one is a match which ignites some new tinder in him unignitible by any previous match. Without these the sparks of individuality would sleep in him forever. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 208:We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 209:Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 210:We would not - from here - counsel anyone to be guided by influences from without. ... If these come as in inspirational writings from within, and not as guidance from others - that is different ... the inspirational may develop the soul of the individual, while the automatic may rarely reach beyond the force that is guiding or directing. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 211:Healing of the physical without the change in the mental and spiritual aspects brings little real help to the individual in the end. How true, because the mind and the body imprint and imitate each other. What we think, we become. What we become, we think. It's an insidious process that can predispose us to illness or it can lead us to health. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 212:Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 213:The Self never undergoes change; the intellect never possesses consciousness. But when one sees all this world, he is deluded into thinking, "I am the seer, I am the knower." Mistaking one's Self for the individual entity, one is overcome with fear. If one knows oneself not as the individual but as the supreme Self, one becomes free from fear. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 214:Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 215:The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it. The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 216:And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 217:Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 218:Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 219:Men of widely divergent views in our own country live in peace together because they share certain common aspirations which are more important than their differences... . The common responsibility of all Americans is to become effective, helpful participants in a way of life that blends and harmonizes the fiercely competitive demands of the individual and society. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 220:What Is Realisation? Living the spiritual life is a continuous ‘dying’ of layers of the individual’s self. With each significant ‘death’ there is an advance in consciousness, marked by a finer perception of spiritual truth and a distinct change in the persona. At the spiritual energy level the change is usually startlingly dramatic and is often referred to as realisation. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 221:Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws... . There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased - freedom from the despotism of the majority. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 222:For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given& 223:In a community of human beings working together, the well-being of the community will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of the work he has himself done; i.e., the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow workers, and the more his own requirements are satisfied, not out of his own work done, but out of work done by the others. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 224:My job is simply to proclaim the Gospel, and to let the Spirit of God apply in the individual hearts. When I give the invitation for people to receive Christ it will be so quiet you can hear a pin drop. And you will see people coming forward deliberately, quietly, reverently, thoughtfully, and many of their lives. . . . will have been transformed and changed in that moment. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 225:Spiritual superiority only sees the individual. But alas, ordinarily we human beings are sensual and, therefore, as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes - we see something abstract, the crowd, and we become different. But in the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd, He only sees each individual. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 226:The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 227:When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 228:Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 229:Capitalism as a social order and as a creed is the expression of the belief in economic progress as leading toward the freedom and equality of the individual in a free and open society. Marxism expects this society to result from the abolition of private profit. Capitalism expects the free and equal society to result from the enthronement of private profit as supreme ruler of social behavior. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 230:More than ever before, in our country, this is the age of the individual. Endowed with the accumulated knowledge of centuries, armed with all the instruments of modern science, he is still assured personal freedom and wide avenues of expression so that he may win for himself, his family and his country greater material comfort, ease and happiness; greater spiritual satisfaction and contentment. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 231:If the photographer is to have a chance of achieving a true reflection of a person’s world– which is as much outside him as inside him– it is necessary that the subject of the portrait should be in a situation normal to him. We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being, and integrate into the portrait the individual’s habitat– for man, no less than animals, has his habitat. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 232:A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 233:The basis of artistic creation is not what is, but what might be; not the real, but the possible. Artists create according to the same principles as nature, but they apply them to individual entities, while nature, to use a Goethean expression, thinks nothing of individual things. She is always building and destroying, because she wants to achieve perfection, not in the individual thing, but in the whole. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 234:Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 235:The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 236:The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 237:You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 238:Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 239:Success is not to be gained by a blind and slavish following of anyone's rules or advice, our own any more than any other person's. There is no royal road to success- no patent process by which the unsuccessful are to be magically transformed. . . . Rules and advice may greatly assist-and they undoubtedly do this-but the real work must be accomplished by the individual. He or she must carve out his or her own destiny. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 240:There's another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. ... For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That's what hate does. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 241:We must remove government's smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state - and which remain the real source of our progress as a people. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 242:Modern non-dual spirituality is often characterized by a complete denial of the reality of the individual self. A central claim is that awakening requires the understanding that there is ‘no doer’ with free will to choose and act. The idea of an individual agent with volition arises from the illusion of separateness. In reality everything is just happening and seeing this leads to the realization of ‘no self’, which is the ‘final truth’. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 243:The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual, the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred: that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 244:The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one's particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 245:I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one - and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 246:The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 247:Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 248:Art and education may refine the taste, but they cannot purify the heart and regenerate the individual. His (Christôs) words were simple yet profound. And they shook people, provoking either happy acceptance or violent refection. People were never the same after listening to him¶.The people who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 249:I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 250:If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 251:I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 252:Consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, it at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 253:Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 254:While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 255:Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 256:You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Paty, which is collective and immortal. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 257:Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual - this freedom is necessary for the individual. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 258:In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 259:Personal prayer, it seems to me, is one of the simplest necessities of life, as basic to the individual as sunshine, food and water-and at times, of course, more so. By prayer I mean an effort to get in touch with the Infinite. We know that our prayers are imperfect. Of course they are. We are imperfect human beings. A thousand experiences have convinced me beyond room of doubt that prayer multiplies the strength of the individual and brings within the scope of his capabilities almost any conceivable objective. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 260:Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by government. decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 261:The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 262:The notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 263:Well for everyone to make a study of astrology for, as indicated, while many individuals have set about to prove the astrological aspects and astrological survey enable one to determine future as well as the past conditions, these are well to the point where the individual understands that these act upon individuals because of their sojourn or correlation of their associations with the environs through which these are shown - see? Rather than the star directing the life, the life of the individual directs the courses of the stars, see? ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 264:If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly begin with the quadrille& 265:The Inner Teachings of all great religions contain references to a Silent Place of the Soul in which the Individual Spirit communes with the Infinite Spirit of Life. Many are the references to the Inner Chamber, the door to which will be opened to him who gives the Right Knock. Many are the admonitions to “Enter into thine Inner Chamber and shut the Door.” This Inner Chamber is not the physical place which so many have considered it to be. It is the Quiet Place of the Soul— the Sanctuary of the Spirit— the state of Spiritual Consciousness. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 266:No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 267:It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 268:The system is not intended as a substitute for private savings, pension plans, and insurance protection. It is, rather, intended as the foundation upon which these other forms of protection can be soundly built. Thus, the individual's own work, his planning and his thrift will bring him a higher standard of living upon his retirement, or his family a higher standard of living in the event of his death, than would otherwise be the case. Hence the system both encourages thrift and self-reliance, and helps to prevent destitution in our national life. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 269:I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower from, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 270:We never try to convert those who receive (aid) to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God's presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men - simply better - we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life - his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 271:First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 272:So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, & 273:Success is in the student, not in the university; greatness is in the individual, not in the library; power is in the man, not in his crutches. A great man will make opportunities, even out of the commonest and meanest situations. If a man is not superior to his education, is not larger than his crutches or his helps, if he is not greater than the means of his culture, which are but the sign-boards pointing the way to success, he will never reach greatness. Not learning, not culture alone, not helps and opportunities, but personal power and sterling integrity, make a man great. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 274:The Spiritual Creative Power is available to you. You may secure its services and employ them in the tasks and work of your everyday life, and toward the attainment of your ideals. You, the individual Creative Spirit, are entitled by your birthright to claim and demand the aid and assistance of the Infinite and Eternal SPIRIT in which you live and move and have your being, and from which your life and power proceed and flow. You have the natural and inalienable right to draw upon the Infinite Fount of Creative Power, and to apply that power through your own creative channels. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 275:I would say that introverts make some of the best international philosophers. The less common attribute of the introverted lifestyle - a close societal connection, as such a connection disappears or changes in relevance as the currents of the winds change - leaves too much room for one's own cultural bias. Instead, introverts tend to turn inward, the laboratory of being and all its forms. This is the most accurate study of the individual human being, which is in turn, rather than those affected by cultural limitations, the most universal reflection of human understanding and human behavior. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 276:Until the dead are buried they change somewhat in appearance each day. The color change in Caucasian races is from white to yellow, to yellow-green, to black. If left long enough in the heat the flesh comes to resemble coal-tar, especially where it has been broken or torn, and it has quite a visible tarlike iridescence. The dead grow larger each day until sometimes they become quite too big for their uniforms, filling these until they seem blown tight enough to burst. The individual members may increase in girth to an unbelievable extent and faces fill as taut and globular as balloons. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 277:I'm sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can't keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to those millions of unsung men and women, who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try to keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 278:When someone's body can no longer perform its functions in the natural world in response to the thoughts and affections of its spirit (which it derives from the spiritual world), then we say that the individual has died. This happens when the lungs' breathing and the heart's systolic motion have ceased. The person, though, has not died at all. We are only separated from the physical nature that was useful to us in the world. The essential person is actually still alive. I say that the essential person is still alive because we are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits. After all, it is the spirit within us that thinks, and thought and affection together make us the people we are. We can see, then, that when we die we simply move from one world into another. This is why in the inner meaning of the Bible, "death" means resurrection and a continuation of life. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:State is the individual writ large. ~ Plato, #NFDB
2:Hate the behavior, not the individual. ~ Laura Wiess, #NFDB
3:The individual is the product of power. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
4:The unspeakable visions of the individual. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
5:Our starting point is not the individual: ~ Joseph Goebbels, #NFDB
6:nonviolence first changes the individual. ~ Coretta Scott King, #NFDB
7:When the individual feels, the community reels. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
8:The individual is the brain, not the heart. ~ Christiaan Barnard, #NFDB
9:The team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion. ~ Mia Hamm, #NFDB
10:Empowering the individual spirit is WHY Apple exists. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
11:Look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
12:It is only to the individual that a soul is given. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
13:Liberty, then, is the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. ~ Josiah Warren, #NFDB
14:Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
15:The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
16:Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
17:"The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
18:The State is concentric, but the individual is eccentric. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
19:The world begins to exist when the individual discovers it. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
20:Education should bring to light the ideal of the individual. ~ Jean Paul, #NFDB
21:The individual who signs the check has the ultimate power. ~ Jerry Rubin, #NFDB
22:self-destruction destroys
more than just the individual. ~ Alicia Cook,#NFDB
23:Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
24:Benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
25:Gordon W. Allport’s book, The Individual and His Religion: ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
26:The common good and the individual good rarely coincide. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko, #NFDB
27:The republican system no longer constrained the individual. ~ Edward J Watts, #NFDB
28:I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
29:...primarily the individual is going to study at home. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
30:Style is not about the clothes, it's about the individual ~ Alexander McQueen, #NFDB
31:Bilingualism for the individual is fine, but not for a country. ~ S I Hayakawa, #NFDB
32:"The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
33:It's the work that's important, not the individual who does it. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
34:For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society. ~ LeVar Burton, #NFDB
35:Indecision is actually the individual’s decision to fail. ~ Raymond Charles Barker, #NFDB
36:The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
37:Our thoughts are to the individual as our art is to the community. ~ Wendell Pierce, #NFDB
38:Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
39:The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
40:The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
41:The power of the individual is as powerful as the universe is infinite. ~ Tom Hanks, #NFDB
42:Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual. ~ Ignacy Jan Paderewski, #NFDB
43:The individual has been crushed by our style of management today. ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
44:The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
45:The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
46:...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
47:Society attacks early when the individual is helpless. —B. F. SKINNER ~ Robert B Baer, #NFDB
48:The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
49:There is no meaningful yes unless the individual could also have said no. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
50:All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. ~ Ralph Ellison, #NFDB
51:For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
52:Give the individual the power to be a producer as well as a consumer. ~ Pierre Omidyar, #NFDB
53:"In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
54:Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
55:The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world. I ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
56:There's no wrong way of doing art. It's an expression of the individual. ~ Swizz Beatz, #NFDB
57:The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime. ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
58:In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
59:I REPRESENT THE INDIVIDUAL. I REPRESENT BEING HAPPY WITH WHO YOU ARE ~ Kristen McMenamy, #NFDB
60:The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime. ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
61:Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
62:Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
63:The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large". ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
64:There is no meaningful "yes" unless the individual could also have said "no. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
65:The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
66:For the Infinite One, there is no place, the individual is himself the place. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
67:One feels the insignificance of the individual, and it makes one happy. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
68:Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
69:Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
70:But enough about the individual chemicals involved; let’s get to the circuits. ~ Alex Korb, #NFDB
71:The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
72:Institutions generally like to mediate the individual’s access to authority ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
73:The religion of Islam brings out of the individual all of his dormant potential. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
74:Ultimately, the source of our problems lies at the level of the individual. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
75:I no longer believe in literary schools now; I believe in the individual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
76:Scoutmasters deal with the individual boy rather than with the mass. ~ Baden Powell de Aquino, #NFDB
77:The individual incentive not to commit crime on Wall Street now is almost zero. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB
78:the individual is today no longer primarily a citizen, but a party member. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
79:There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
80:Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
81:Organized religion, however, is different from the religion of the individual. ~ Romila Thapar, #NFDB
82:Religion is poetry misunderstood. ~ Joseph Campbell, “Mythology and the Individual,” Lecture 4, #NFDB
83:The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
84:The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
85:The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual. ~ Edward Bellamy, #NFDB
86:group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
87:The individual's inner speech and actions attract the conditions of his life. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
88:The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
89:The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt, #NFDB
90:The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
91:A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs. ~ Ferdinand de Saussure, #NFDB
92:As for the individual track being the “natural unit of music,” that’s a fantasy. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
93:What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. ~ William James, #NFDB
94:Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
95:For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
96:group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
97:Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
98:The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments. ~ Mercy Otis Warren, #NFDB
99:The value of the individual does not lie in him. He receives it by union with Christ. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
100:We have to bring back the individual. Management has smothered the individual. ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
101:Yoga believes in transforming the individual before transforming the world. ~ Swami Satchidananda, #NFDB
102:You can only get discipline in the mass by discipline in the individual. ~ Baden Powell de Aquino, #NFDB
103:Enthusiasm is a vital element toward the individual success of every man or woman. ~ Conrad Hilton, #NFDB
104:Gym is a center of capitalist breakdown, and everything is focused on the individual. ~ Jenny Hval, #NFDB
105:I focus on the individual and not seeing this great big monster, "the press." ~ Marianne Faithfull, #NFDB
106:No matter how bad the individual, everybody has reasons for why they do what they do. ~ Chris Pine, #NFDB
107:The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
108:The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
109:Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform? ~ Lily King, #NFDB
110:An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation. ~ William James, #NFDB
111:Every local church is only as good as the individual members are, not one bit better. If ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
112:The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization. ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
113:A crime is born in the gap between the morality of society and that of the individual. ~ H kan Nesser, #NFDB
114:Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all ~ Nikita Khrushchev, #NFDB
115:that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
116:The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
117:America had an emphasis on the individual and so education became available for everyone. ~ John Glenn, #NFDB
118:Georgian architecture respected the scale of both the individual and the community. ~ Stephen Gardiner, #NFDB
119:Life's values originate in circumstances over which the individual has no control. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
120:Man is free Woyzeck. Man is the ultimate expression of the individual urge to freedom. ~ Georg B chner, #NFDB
121:The absorption of the individual in the universal is only another term for its destruction. ~ C H Dodd, #NFDB
122:The individual is at the apex of his species' past, at the entrance to its future. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
123:The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. ~ Friedrich A Hayek, #NFDB
124:What education is to the individual, revelation is to the whole human race. ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, #NFDB
125:An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
~ William James,#NFDB
126:Circumstances can never be good or bad. Only the individual man can be good or bad. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
127:Genealogy gives us a feeling of immortality. The individual dies; the family lives on. ~ Oliver P tzsch, #NFDB
128:I am never interested in the individual, but in the human species and its environment. ~ Andreas Gursky, #NFDB
129:Inner freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for the individual. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
130:that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
131:The individual who knows the score about life sees difficulties as opportunities ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
132:What changes with fame is the perceptions of the individual rather than the individual. ~ Julia Roberts, #NFDB
133:Omens are the individual language in which God talks to you. My omens are not your omens. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
134:responsibility on the individual, on the bootstraps with which she ought pull herself up. ~ Sarah Smarsh, #NFDB
135:Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
136:The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
137:The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
138:Compassion is the artwork of tuning the individual plans with the grand plan of the existence. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
139:It should be the right of the individual to decide whether he wants to belong to a union. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
140:The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
141:The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual - as we think so will we act. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
142:The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
143:This will be the most important decision of your life, the individual whom you marry. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
144:An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual. ~ Robert Baden Powell, #NFDB
145:Fascism accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state's. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
146:The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
147:Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
148:Consciousness in the individual is that area where the totality of life is located. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
149:Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future. ~ Theodore White, #NFDB
150:Instead of seeing a customer in every individual, we must see the individual in every customer. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
151:It reveals itself rather than is learned. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
152:Mankind was not meant to suffer -- bliss is our nature. The individual is cosmic. Let's rock. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB
153:Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
154:"Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
155:It is not the universal and the regular that characterize the individual, but rather the unique. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
156:Story is a medicine which strengthens and arights the individual and the community. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, #NFDB
157:The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
158:The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
159:The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it. ~ Tricia Cunningham, #NFDB
160:The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
161:We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
162:Broadway is not just the song and the shows; it's the individual performers and the community. ~ Darren Criss, #NFDB
163:Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future. ~ Theodore H White, #NFDB
164:In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens. ~ Dick Durbin, #NFDB
165:It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
166:The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us. ~ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, #NFDB
167:There are no levels of Reality; there are only levels of experience for the individual. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
168:Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
169:Require the immortality of the individual is wanting to perpetuate an error to infinity. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
170:The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
171:The goal changes from the general to the individual from need to wish, from ethics to aesthetics. ~ Asger Jorn, #NFDB
172:The valuable person in any business is the individual who can and will cooperate with others. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
173:Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
174:We do not, however, accept a bill of rights which tends to make the individual superior to the state ~ Various, #NFDB
175:Whether an MP is a woman or a man, it's about the qualities of the individual in doing that job. ~ Theresa May, #NFDB
176:A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
177:In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
178:Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because there is nothing to be gained by him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
179:The individual becomes for himself what he is in himself through what he manifests for others. ~ Lev S Vygotsky, #NFDB
180:The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
181:The psychic is the support of the individual evolution ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Psychic Being, #NFDB
182:We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
183:We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
184:I Believe in Miracles and the Power of the Individual to make a positive difference in the world. ~ Warren Brown, #NFDB
185:That so fully investigates how the individual is shaped by history, and history by the individual? ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
186:The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
187:The union of feminine and masculine energies within the individual is the basis of all creation. ~ Shakti Gawain, #NFDB
188:"Happiness and contentment . . . these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
189:The individual cannot exist outside of the many spheres of the deeply interconnected webs of life ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
190:The individual who has experienced solitude will not easily become a victim of mass suggestion. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
191:War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
192:Death comes in its own time, in its own way.Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it. ~ Henry Van Dyke, #NFDB
193:History does not care about the suffering of the individual. Only the outcome of their struggles. ~ Alison Goodman, #NFDB
194:If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
195:Only the individual, or that part of life which is in the firm grasp of the individual, is real. ~ John Dos Passos, #NFDB
196:Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
197:The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
198:The state of the health of the individual is equivalent to the state to the health of the colon. ~ Woody Harrelson, #NFDB
199:To live only for the Divine: this means to have overcome all the difficulties of the individual life. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
200:With freedom goes responsibility, a responsibility that can only be met by the individual himself. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
201:Anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing. ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
202:For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind? ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
203:Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual." ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
204:I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer. ~ Denis Hayes, #NFDB
205:Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future. ~ Jacob Burckhardt, #NFDB
206:Personality is and does something...It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual ~ Gordon Allport, #NFDB
207:Poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem. ~ Robert Pinsky, #NFDB
208:The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
209:Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. ~ Gustave Courbet, #NFDB
210:Judo teaches us to look for the best possible course of action, whatever the individual circumstances. ~ Kano Jigoro, #NFDB
211:Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or the plea of the individual. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
212:Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
213:The individual is not separate from God. Hence love means one has love towards one's own Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
214:The individual is not separate from God. Hence love means one has love towards one’s own Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
215:The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
216:they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
217:What most people want, I guess? I want the individual to know that if we unite, we are not powerless. ~ David Guetta, #NFDB
218:In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
219:The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
220:The individual with a negative mental attitude attracts troubles as a magnet attracts steel fittings. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
221:Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society. ~ Gunnar Myrdal, #NFDB
222:Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
223:It is thus not the individual who forms the language, it is the language which forms the individual. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
224:take consolation from the fact that the brighter the individual, the more he or she detests small talk. ~ Leil Lowndes, #NFDB
225:The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, #NFDB
226:There is a crime commited by the society against the individual,a crime that is commited afresh each day ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
227:This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
228:Everyone will have noticed how the Old Testament seems at times to ignore our conception of the individual. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
229:love obsession often serves as a distraction, keeping the individual’s gaze from more painful thoughts. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
230:Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
231:The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war. ~ John Hospers, #NFDB
232:a minute freed from the order of time has recreated in us ... the individual freed from the order of time, ~ John Zerzan, #NFDB
233:How much do you engage yourself in what's truly real and important in life? That's the individual question. ~ Ted Danson, #NFDB
234:Leadership ignites the circuit between the individual and the mass and thereby alters history. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
235:organized study deadens the mind, and that genuine insight arises spontaneously from the individual soul. ~ Louis Menand, #NFDB
236:The experience of the individual has become the experience of the people, thanks solely to the camera. ~ Joseph Goebbels, #NFDB
237:"The uniqueness of the individual and of his situation stares the doctor in the face and demands an answer." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
238:...we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
239:A dialogue among civilizations can be seen as a dialogue between the individual and the universal. ~ Abdelaziz Bouteflika, #NFDB
240:Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
241:Even when I was playing, I never thought much about the individual honors. I wanted to go to the Super Bowl. ~ Joe Greene, #NFDB
242:It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
243:Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
244:The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
245:There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
246:...the right of the individual to elect freely the manner of his care in illness must be preserved. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
247:To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. ~ Joseph Goebbels, #NFDB
248:If one gains the Peace of the Self, it will spread without any effort on the part of the individual. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
249:In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
250:It is the individual man in his individual freedom who can mature with his warm spirit the unripe world. ~ Christopher Fry, #NFDB
251:old grudges and bitterness always hurt the individual more than the one whom he believes injured him. ~ Elizabeth Chandler, #NFDB
252:Perseverance and tact are the two most important qualities for the individual who wants to move ahead. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
253:The individual college youth cannot wait forever until the problem of his education is decided. ~ Charles Hamilton Houston, #NFDB
254:There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
255:The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
256:The sickness of the individual is ultimately caused by and sustained by the sickness of his civilization ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
257:Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group. ~ Harold Evans, #NFDB
258:while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
259:I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
260:In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
261:Leonidas’s and Dienekes’ quips draw the individual out of his private terror and yoke him to the group. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
262:Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
263:The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
264:The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
265:The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
266:while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
267:History has always been a series of pendulum swings, but the individual doesn't have to get caught in that. ~ Robert Johnson, #NFDB
268:I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
269:If the individual cannot dream of a better future, he cannot live well today. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
270:The individual man tries to escape the race. And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
271:The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
272:To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
273:To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life. ~ Gregory Orr, #NFDB
274:We do not hold that doctrine gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings come first. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
275:We need do no more than repeat: only under communism does the individual become himself and lead his own life. ~ Johann Most, #NFDB
276:All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
277:I don't believe in outing people. It's up to the individual, but there's nothing wrong putting the pressure on. ~ Rick Mercer, #NFDB
278:If the individual cannot dream of a better future, he cannot live well today. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
279:It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
280:The duty of the individual farmer, at this time, is to increase his production, particularly of food crops. ~ David F Houston, #NFDB
281:The sacredness of the individual is not balanced by any sense of the whole or concern for the common good. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
282:Yoga serves the individual, and does so through inviting transformation rather than by giving information. ~ T K V Desikachar, #NFDB
283:Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
284:Indeed, the mere exposure effect is actually stronger for stimuli that the individual never consciously sees ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
285:In fact unrestrained capitalism is quite cruel and the cost is on the individual human, on his or her grace. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
286:In the early uroboric state there is a fusion both of man with the world and of the individual with the group. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
287:"Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its dominion the individual is pauperized." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
288:The poetic myths are dead; and the poetic image, which is the myth of the individual, reigns in their stead. ~ Cecil Day Lewis, #NFDB
289:...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
290:Fundamentally, the answers to our challenges in healthcare relies in engaging and empowering the individual. ~ Elizabeth Holmes, #NFDB
291:In an environment without public platform nor protection, the individual is the most powerful and most responsible. ~ Ai Weiwei, #NFDB
292:It is important to foster individuality,” he said, “for only the individual can produce the new ideas.”8 This ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
293:The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
294:The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited, he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
295:The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
296:There are amazing teachers, but the system doesn't always allow them to address the individual needs of a child. ~ Phil Keoghan, #NFDB
297:To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
298:When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
299:As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
300:Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
301:Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual. ~ Kenneth Lee Pike, #NFDB
302:In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
303:Life is a great tapestry. The individual is only an insignificant thread in an immense and miraculous pattern. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
304:Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can’t see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
305:Social Unity theory spoke about equality, using it so the State could plunder the production of the individual. ~ Vaughn Heppner, #NFDB
306:The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
307:The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
308:The individual disposition is already a factor in childhood; it is innate, and not acquired in the course of a life. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
309:The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
310:Theirs was a love that acknowledged the individual as separate from the whole, from the family as a unit. ~ Fatima Farheen Mirza, #NFDB
311:The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
312:A pure heart does not demean the spirit of an individual, it, instead, compels the individual to examine his spirit. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
313:Every collection reflects the ideas andvalues and interests of the individual or group who developed the collection. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
314:Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
315:It seems as if, in making a marriage, either the individual or the interest of the species must come off badly. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
316:Market competition is the only form of organization which can afford a large measure of freedom to the individual. ~ Frank Knight, #NFDB
317:Politics is a process which should slowly bring to public all the private worries and hopes of the individual. ~ Theodore H White, #NFDB
318:The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. ~ J Edgar Hoover, #NFDB
319:The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for. ~ Albert Ellis, #NFDB
320:To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission. ~ Charles A Lindbergh, #NFDB
321:When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
322:If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
323:In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
324:It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
325:It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
326:Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
327:The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
328:The integrative tendencies of the individual are incomparably more dangerous than his self-assertive tendencies. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
329:"The more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
330:Adherence to principles, and adherence to the individual, combine to make the Rebel Army an indivisible fist. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara, #NFDB
331:And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
332:I'm for absolute autonomy of the individual, and an adult, competent woman has absolute autonomy. It's her choice. ~ Jack Kevorkian, #NFDB
333:Spirituality can go hand-in-hand with ruthless single-mindedness when the individual is convinced his cause is just ~ Michela Wrong, #NFDB
334:The development of the individual can be described as a succession of new births at consecutively higher levels. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
335:The malady of the world is that the individual cannot find his real soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man, #NFDB
336:The only justifiable purpose of political institutions is to ensure the unhindered development of the individual. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
337:The personalisation of the individual by the ‘hominisation’ of the whole group. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
338:There's no thought given to the individual because there aren't any individuals in socialism; everybody's the same. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
339:A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
340:At a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, jazz represents a celebration of the individual. ~ Ellis Marsalis Jr, #NFDB
341:Brahman is in this world to represent Itself in the values of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Destiny of the Individual, #NFDB
342:Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
343:the individual can find truth by using his powers of observation and reason instead of blindly following tradition. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
344:The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others. ~ Robert Owen, #NFDB
345:The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
346:We are convinced that the Rosary, if devotely used is bound to benefit not only the individual but society at large. ~ Pope Leo XIII, #NFDB
347:A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
348:Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
349:I don't think it's government's job to find health care for people. I think it's the individual's job to find health care. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
350:I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform. ~ Erykah Badu, #NFDB
351:The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
352:The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him. ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
353:the protective energies have adapted toward defending the individual psychologically, rather than physiologically. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
354:War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier. ~ Georgia O Keeffe, #NFDB
355:Wth subtly developed body awareness, it is possible for the individual to become the conscious orchestrator of health. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
356:All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement. Then the archetypes begin to function. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
357:As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre, #NFDB
358:Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
359:"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
360:Faith cannot be inherited or gained by being baptized into a Church. Faith is a matter between the individual and God. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
361:I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
362:I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ~ John D Rockefeller, #NFDB
363:It is the individual's ability to deal with the unexpected that characterizes the difference between success and failure. ~ Ross Perot, #NFDB
364:I will never surrender the rights of the individual - the complete rights of the individual - to any "ism" whatever. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
365:Scripture would not only solve the individual and family divisions, but it would also solve the ecclesiastical confusion. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
366:Spiritual experiences and their results are not meant for the individual. They are for the evolution of the whole race. ~ Andrew Cohen, #NFDB
367:That civilization perishes in which the individual thwarts the revelation of the universal. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man, #NFDB
368:The dark side is about survival. It’s about unleashing your inner power. It glorifies the strength of the individual. ~ Drew Karpyshyn, #NFDB
369:The individual struggling with overwhelming emotions and DBT therapists will benefit significantly from this workbook. ~ Matthew McKay, #NFDB
370:The ultimate essence of yoga is the contact and the union between the individual consciousness and the divine consciousness. ~ Raphael, #NFDB
371:black. Theirs was a love that acknowledged the individual as separate from the whole, from the family as a unit. ~ Fatima Farheen Mirza, #NFDB
372:Corporal, afterwards Lieutenant, Christie, of the P.P.C.L.I., was one of the individual pioneers of sniping. ~ Hesketh Hesketh Prichard, #NFDB
373:Dreams are the way to unfulfilled wishes in the individual; visions are the way to unfulfilled dreams in mankind. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB
374:"It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
375:The basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual... the humility of the spirit. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
376:The individual point of view is the only point of view from which one is able to look at the world in its truth. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
377:wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state ~ Socrates, #NFDB
378:We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual. ~ Bill W, #NFDB
379:When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
380:A good hitting instructor is able to mold his teaching to the individual. If a guy stands on his head, you perfect that. ~ Bill Robinson, #NFDB
381:Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
382:Nothing divides men so much as pride, whether it be the pride of the individual, of the family, of the class or of the nation. ~ Tolstoy, #NFDB
383:The death serves a purpose species-wise while it also serves the purposes of the individual, for no death comes unbidden. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
384:The height of stupidity is most clearly demonstrated by the individual who ridicules something he knows nothing about. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
385:The individual person is more interesting than people in general; he and not they is the one whom God created in His image. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
386:The unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
387:When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, just as we shall be pitied some day. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
388:Angels just see it all at once; they see all the individual applications of the general principle in the general principle ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
389:Both bad driving and bad voting are dangerous not merely to the individual who practices them, but to innocent bystanders. ~ Bryan Caplan, #NFDB
390:If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte... ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual's taste. ~ Reed Hastings, #NFDB
391:In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
392:In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
393:The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
394:In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform. ~ John Ralston Saul, #NFDB
395:In the United States I saw how the market liberates the individual and allows people to be free to make personal choices. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
396:Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
397:Prayers are answered when the individual’s subconscious mind responds to the mental picture or thought in his or her mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
398:The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
399:The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
400:The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
401:The original of morals lies with the thought that 'the community is more valuable than the individual' (Menschliches 2.1.89 ~ John Carroll, #NFDB
402:To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
403:Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
404:I don’t believe in the perfectibility of the individual. What was it in this statement that made Clark want to weep? ~ Emily St John Mandel, #NFDB
405:Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
406:Our national myths often exaggerate the role of the individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort. ~ Robert D Putnam, #NFDB
407:The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. ~ William James, #NFDB
408:The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual; the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. ~ William James, #NFDB
409:The Ego is partly free. partly determined, and reaches fuller freedom by approaching the Individual who is most free: God. ~ Muhammad Iqbal, #NFDB
410:The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
411:The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
412:The individual dies, the kind is indestructible. The individual is the expression in time of the kind which is outside time. ~ Schopenhauer, #NFDB
413:The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
414:The liberation cannot be reached but by means of the perception of the identity of the individual spirit with the universal spirit. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
415:We must eliminate the individual tendency to selfishness that snares the soul, shrinks the heart, and darkens the mind. ~ Spencer W Kimball, #NFDB
416:All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
417:Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
418:Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimize the importance of the individual and maximize the importance of the group. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
419:No man is simply good or simply bad; every man is a mixture of contraries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
420:One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent. ~ Justin Cronin, #NFDB
421:The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
422:I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
423:I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual. ~ Dennis Chavez, #NFDB
424:It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
425:It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
426:Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom, but an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
427:The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
428:The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
429:The individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
430:The individual consciousness by the attempt to measure the Impersonal loses its individual egoism and becomes one with Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
431:The individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #NFDB
432:Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling. ~ John William Draper, #NFDB
433:Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
434:What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
435:What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence. ~ Fr d ric Bastiat, #NFDB
436:All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the individual being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Surrender, #NFDB
437:Art for me...is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society. ~ Emile Zola, #NFDB
438:Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live. ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
439:learned in World War II that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen fired their weapons at an exposed enemy soldier. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
440:Revenues should be increased not by increasing the tax rates on the individual but by building a bigger economy for everybody. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
441:the good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
442:The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is the individual. ~ Osamu Dazai, #NFDB
443:The myth is a surviving fragment of the psychic life of the infancy of the race whilst the dream is the myth of the individual. ~ Karl Abraham, #NFDB
444:The real genius to make a marketplace flourish doesn't come from the government. It comes from the individual genius of its people. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
445:When the Word is stored in the heart, the individual finds it a wonderful power in preserving him from outbreaking sin. ~ Eric Christian Olsen, #NFDB
446:Can someone explain the vitriol whenever Ayn Rand comes up? 'Atlas' is the greatest motivator for the individual that I can imagine. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
447:Conscience was a devil that plagued the individual. Collectively, a people squashed it as easily as stepping on a daisy. ~ William Kent Krueger, #NFDB
448:Every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
449:From my own experience, there are so many people who believe that the individual can change. The individual doesn't have to be LGBT. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
450:In therapy the individual learns to recognize and express his feelings as his own feelings, not as a fact about another person. ~ Carl R Rogers, #NFDB
451:Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual? ~ Benjamin Tucker, #NFDB
452:Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact. ~ Dave Brubeck, #NFDB
453:Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions. ~ George Will, #NFDB
454:Prayers are answered when the individual’s subconscious mind responds to the mental picture or thought in his or her mind. This ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
455:talent makes a huge spiritual leap possible. It’s an almost universal, independent phenomenon that transcends the individual. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
456:"The individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil . . . has need, first & foremost, of self-knowledge . . . " ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
457:The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
458:Three fundamental aspects of the Divine - the Individual or Immanent, the Cosmic and the Transcendent
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
459:Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual. ~ Alex Haley, #NFDB
460:A life that is truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
461:Always it is the individual who progresses and compels the rest to progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea, #NFDB
462:I'm just really interested in the interface of the individual with the collective. I think that's where the arts live. ~ Alison Hawthorne Deming, #NFDB
463:Simon traces his fingers up my spine, touching bone after bone like he’s holding the individual beads of a rosary in silent worship. ~ B L Berry, #NFDB
464:Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
465:The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
466:the individual mind had to create a mental perspective for the whole organism relative to those two sets of representations— ~ Ant nio R Dam sio, #NFDB
467:The Only Thing in the World Worth a Damn is the Strange, Touching, Pathetic, Awesome Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
468:The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
469:The success of an entire advertising campaign may stand or fall on what is said in the headlines of the individual advertisements. ~ John Caples, #NFDB
470:What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
471:All personal achievement starts within the mind of the individual-knowing your problem is the first step in finding the solution. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
472:Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
473:success, ultimately, is up to the individual. It isn’t the pen—it’s the writer; it isn’t the road—it’s the runner that counts. ~ Shad Helmstetter, #NFDB
474:The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
475:Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
476:A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madness at the individual level. ~ Caitl n R Kiernan, #NFDB
477:For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
478:is to break through the bonds that attach the individual to the world of his senses and separate him from his eternal nature. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, #NFDB
479:it connects the individual person’s intuition with a frame of mind that •anyone must be in when making judgments about such intuitions ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
480:Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
481:Physical courage in whatever scene ... seems to hinge on whether the individual can feel he is fighting for others as well as himself. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
482:Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individuals contribution far more than the individual himself. ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
483:The common good and the individual good rarely coincide. Sure, I know it's true. But some truths are probably worse than lies. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko, #NFDB
484:The heroic life is living the individual adventure (but) there's no security there. Nothing is exciting if you know the outcome. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
485:The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
486:The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself. ~ John Knowles, #NFDB
487:The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
488:Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
489:If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State. ~ Benjamin Tucker, #NFDB
490:The behavior of the economy as a whole, at the aggregate, macro-level, is built up from the individual equations at the micro-level. ~ Paul Ormerod, #NFDB
491:the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
492:The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as those concern the interests of no person but himself. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
493:The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual. ~ Lev S Vygotsky, #NFDB
494:What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
495:All men can see the individual tactics necessary to conquer, but almost no one can see the strategy out of which total victory is evolved. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
496:emotions caused the individual and society to be weak spiritually and did not help with survival in the harsh environment of this world. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
497:In the life of the individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
498:In the very desire for help one is apt to forget that the objective should be to enable the individual to stand on his own feet. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
499:It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
500:It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards. ~ Antony Beevor, #NFDB
501:The concrete life of the individual is destroyed in order that the abstract idea of the whole may drag out its sorry existence. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
502:The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
503:The most important factor for the development of the individual is the structure and the values of the society into which he was born. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
504:The present goal of the individual
in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder. ~ Donald Barthelme,#NFDB
505:The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
506:All great cathedrals began their building by the placement of a single stone. The building unit of a great society is the individual. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
507:A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around. ~ Paul Feyerabend, #NFDB
508:I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes. ~ Michael Schur, #NFDB
509:I don't think there's a specific science you can put on dream psychology. I think that it's up to the, obviously, the individual. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
510:If the individual is to be happy in the contemporary order, he must be open-minded with respect to new values and new arrangements. ~ Thomas Cochrane, #NFDB
511:Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
512:My biggest kick comes from the individual fans I run into. Middle-aged men ask me when we're going to do more Johnny Quest cartoons. ~ Joseph Barbera, #NFDB
513:The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task. (VII, 216) ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
514:The fact that tradition hinders the individual savage from thinking logically by no means proves that he cannot think logically. ~ James Mark Baldwin, #NFDB
515:the individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
516:Ability to persevere begins with you, the individual. However, change is rarely easy. In fact, sometimes it is downright formidable. ~ Paul G Stoltz, #NFDB
517:And because soul music is the limitless affirmation of the individual despite his or her past sins and all obstacles in his or her way, ~ Greil Marcus, #NFDB
518:And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
519:Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
520:In a rural society communities are "given" for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
521:The individual as spirit or being is not confined within his humanity; he has been less than human. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #NFDB
522:The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
523:the “self-image,” the individual’s mental and spiritual concept or “picture” of himself, was the real key to personality and behavior. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
524:Happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the men who loved them; I mean, who love the individual, not the sex. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
525:I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
526:In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
527:I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars but the individual people whose lives I've touched. ~ Clayton Christensen, #NFDB
528:Personal freedom has grown greatly within China, and that will provoke ever more points of conflict between the individual and state. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
529:The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
530:The former morality, namely Kant’s, demanded of the individual actions which one desired of all men: that was a very naive thing; ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
531:The individual is reminded that in him, no less than in the Archetypal Universe, real life must be born if real life is to be lived. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
532:Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
533:I can tell you a secret about life: once you realize how insignificant the individual is in the vastness of space-time, you can face anything. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
534:In Indiana, the Affordable Care Act will raise the average cost of health insurance in the individual market by an unaffordable 72 percent. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
535:In order to get below the ego, you have to crack the ice; then the next thing to be encountered in the individual psyche is the shadow. ~ Edward Edinger, #NFDB
536:No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
537:No society that places the individual above itself will survive; but neither will any society that places the individual below itself. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
538:The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race. ~ Ernst Mach, #NFDB
539:the more intelligent and perceptive the individual, the less happy they generally are. The cost of seeing things as they are, I expect. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
540:The self is not the individual body or mind, but rather that aspect deep inside each individual person that knows the truth. ~ Vishnudevananda Saraswati, #NFDB
541:We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
542:Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
543:The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
544:The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop. ~ Alexander Herzen, #NFDB
545:There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture . . . ~ Charles A Reich, #NFDB
546:To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
547:Two major ideas should be taught to the children of every country. They are: the value of the individual and the fact of the one humanity. ~ Alice Bailey, #NFDB
548:As long as we do not recognize the individual within our societies, we will not be able to live with humanity outside of our faith. In ~ Omar Saif Ghobash, #NFDB
549:God manifests Himself in the individual partially, but He stands behind the progress of the world wholly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #NFDB
550:I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
551:Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor anyone in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
552:Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
553:Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
554:The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions. ~ John Henry Holland, #NFDB
555:The society is the extension of the individual. If the individual is greedy, cruel, merciless, egoistic, etc. so it will be the society. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
556:What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
557:All my lyrics are open to interpretation by the individual and imply many different meanings, therefore their relevance is purely subjective. ~ Ian Curtis, #NFDB
558:Always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Sense, #NFDB
559:Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
560:Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
561:Beyond all the fires of love through which one passes there is the star of Duty, and happy the individual who can live in its serenity. ~ William John Locke, #NFDB
562:I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
563:Life always rides in strength to victory, not through internationalism... but only through the direct responsibility of the individual. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
564:Only the individual can decide what level of risk she can tolerate and what level of freedom she's willing to sacrifice for the sake of safety. ~ Park Dietz, #NFDB
565:People were capable of more love and benevolence than they realized. The collective public voice did not always represent the individual heart ~ Sarah McCoy, #NFDB
566:The greatness of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #NFDB
567:Faith is primarily a process of identification; the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
568:I do consider the individual things individual, in a way because that is what I do I guess, try to find out what is special about each medium. ~ Michael Snow, #NFDB
569:I must change in order to change the world. The only revolution with any permanent value takes part in the breast of the individual person. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
570:In fact, the individual outlook becomes less and less valuable and more and more harmful unless it is transmitted into the corporate outlook. ~ John Grierson, #NFDB
571:Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
572:The essence of spirituality is, to be constantly aware of the oneness of all; at the same time to celebrate the uniqueness of the individual. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
573:. . . the process of individuation is real only if the individual is aware of it and consciously makes a living connection with it. P. 164 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
574:There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
575:America, the family name is called the last name. Dae Hyun said it showed that Americans think the individual is more important than the family. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
576:A society in which the individual feels responsible for his or her actions is more likely to work together and survive to spread its values. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
577:Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
578:I believe love to be hurtful to society, and to the individual happiness of men. I believe, in short, that love does more harm than good. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
579:I love the United States, but I see here everything is measured by success, by how much money it makes, not the satisfaction to the individual. ~ John F Akers, #NFDB
580:No machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #NFDB
581:Realization doesn't destroy the individual any more than the reflection of the moon breaks a drop of water. A drop of water can reflect the whole sky. ~ Dogen, #NFDB
582:The centre of mental thinking is the ego, the person of the individual thinker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge, #NFDB
583:The individual has to awaken his intelligence, not through any form of discipline, resistance, compulsion, coercion, but through freedom. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
584:I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion. ~ Mia Hamm, #NFDB
585:Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #NFDB
586:My message is that science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practice it. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
587:The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
588:The dance of Brindaban is not complete without the death-dance of Kurukshetra; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #NFDB
589:The foundation of the world lies in the nation. The foundation of the nation lies in the family. The foundation of the family lies in the individual. ~ Mencius, #NFDB
590:The individual and the race are always moving, and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heaven more immediately over us. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
591:The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. ~ David Harvey, #NFDB
592:The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
593:This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
594:To damage the sovereignty of the individual is to replace a community inspired by love, benevolence, and beauty by another based solely on power. ~ Anwar Sadat, #NFDB
595:All art is only done by the individual. The individual is all you ever have and all schools only serve to classify their members as failures. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
596:Anarchism has in common with Liberalism the idea that the happiness and prosperity of the individual must be the standard of all social matters. ~ Rudolf Rocker, #NFDB
597:It is only when the individual is good that society will progress. When the society and the nation is based on the observance of human values. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
598:Man himself, who takes up all that went before him and transmutes it into the term of manhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
599:The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
600:The public totally discounts low-probability high-consequence events. The individual says, it's not going to be this plane, this bus, this time. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
601:We must win when we deserve it, by elevating reason and the dignity of the individual, loving justice and the good and the great, even dying for it. ~ Jos Rizal, #NFDB
602:When the brain thinks positively, the hands work positively, the legs run positively and the individual becomes a positive wholesome entity. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
603:All force is cosmic and the individual is merely an instrument. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, Becoming Conscious of the Mother’s Force, #NFDB
604:All life is the play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #NFDB
605:A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
606:Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universe self. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee, #NFDB
607:Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual. ~ George C Marshall, #NFDB
608:Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
609:I have placed my faith in humanity, but faith in the universal becomes meaningless without faith in the individual.
– Panchali Draupadi ~ Krishna Udayasankar,#NFDB
610:People do shit like that because they're assholes, Darren. Not because they're Seer, or Alphas, or dominants.
It's all about the individual. ~ Suzanne Wright,#NFDB
611:Religious devotion is for the individual. Character is for all. There is no loss if there is no devotion. Everything is lost if there is no character. ~ Periyar, #NFDB
612:Self-knowledge is the basis of jeet kune do because it is effective not only for the individual's martial art but also for his life as a human being. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
613:So much depends, of course, on what the individual hears when he gives himself over to the electronic tides breaking on the shore of his Seashell. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
614:The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole. ~ Seamus Heaney, #NFDB
615:The spiritual process is always individual. You may sit in a group, but only the individual can evolve, only the individual can liberate himself. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
616:All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
617:Any spiritual endeavour which enables to raise the human consciousness to cosmic consciousness, to unite the individual with God, is Yoga.
~ Swami Avdheshanand,#NFDB
618:As the Scholar says, blame the individual, and the problem persists; analyse the system, and you're already one step closer to finding a solution. ~ John Burnside, #NFDB
619:Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
620:For Jung, dreams are to the individual what myths are to civilization, namely, symbolic expressions of the spiritual or universal aspect of reality. ~ David Tacey, #NFDB
621:(I always find it hard to admit that anything done collectively can possibly be sincere, since the only truly sentient being is the individual). ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
622:If anything is due to a corporation, it is not due to the individual members thereof, nor do the members individually owe what the corporation owes. ~ Justinian I, #NFDB
623:It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
624:It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
625:The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
626:There's a whole group of Christians who believe the individual is more important, but in the end I don't think that's what Christ was talking about. ~ Lewis Black, #NFDB
627:Thoughts, and words that spring from them, bend the individual's reality. To speak of death is to invite it. To think of sorrow is to produce it. ~ Tony Hillerman, #NFDB
628:Two other axes of conflict emerged: state centralism against regional independence and authoritarianism against the freedom of the individual. The ~ Antony Beevor, #NFDB
629:Any artist who fails to engage with society and the vulnerability of the individual in a cruel existence should not style him-or herself an artist ~ Lena Andersson, #NFDB
630:It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level. ~ Maya Lin, #NFDB
631:The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe . ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
632:The individual seeks out the heat of the crowd, in this century, to protect himself against the cold emanating from the corpse of the world. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
633:Universal suffrage in the end does not recognize any of the individual’s rights except the “right” to be alternately oppressor or oppressed. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
634:Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
635:Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
636:I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
637:One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace, and one of the eternal rights is the individual's right to live. ~ Bertha von Suttner, #NFDB
638:The individual is a cell in the social superorganism. When he feels he is no longer necessary to the larger group, he, too, begins to wither away. As ~ Howard Bloom, #NFDB
639:The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
640:A major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
641:A moral principle in genetic testing is that it should always be done with the consent of the individual. No one wants someone snooping into his DNA. ~ Arthur Caplan, #NFDB
642:Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
643:Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
644:I believe the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and make it possible for him to develop into a creative personality. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
645:I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
646:Literacy, the visual technology, dissolved the tribal magic by means of its stress on fragmentation and specialization and created the individual. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
647:Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #NFDB
648:Need theories can thrive only in a context where the emphasis is on the individual rather than the community and where consumption is a way of life. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
649:The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
650:The more developed a nation is, the more complete is the independence of the individual, and the safer the individual from encroachments by another. ~ Dmitry Pisarev, #NFDB
651:The perfect society will be that which most entirely favours the perfection of the individual. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Imperfection of Past Aggregates, #NFDB
652:The spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the control. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
653:Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined-liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
654:A good portrait is incredibly hard to create, there is too much temptation to pander to the individual rather than portray them as they really were ~ Philippe Halsman, #NFDB
655:A woman who is herself only a sexual object, lives finally in a world of objects, unable to touch in others the individual identity she lacks herself. ~ Betty Friedan, #NFDB
656:Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the individual personality? ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
657:My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. . . . In a gentle way you can shake the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
658:The way of objective reflection turns the individual into something accidental, and thus turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
659:You can go through the process. You can also change. You can do both. Uh, you can do one, the other, or both. And I think it depends on the individual. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
660:You will only have copyright in a society that places a very high value on the individual, the individual intellect, the products of individual intellect. ~ Tim Parks, #NFDB
661:All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it's much more difficult to define the individual in that world. ~ Gore Verbinski, #NFDB
662:An enlightened teacher is able to put a tremendous amount of power through a person who seeks knowledge and escalates the evolution of the individual. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
663:I don't think anybody can be held accountable or responsible for anyone's behaviors expect the individual. This goes beyond that particular situation. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
664:I look for the day...when the only criterion of excellence or position shall be the ability and character of the individual; and this time will come. ~ Susan B Anthony, #NFDB
665:Stress the right of the individual to select only what he desires to know, to use any knowledge as he wishes, that he himself owns what he has learned. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
666:The individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Opening, #NFDB
667:Ants are successful creatures; they are successful because they know very well that the mind of the team is superior to the mind of the individual! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
668:Basic to his political thinking was the recognition of the dignity of the individual and the protection of political and intellectual freedom.”50 When ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
669:In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
670:In a period of such obsessing political controversy as the present, I believe that I am that strange animal, the individual without any politics at all. ~ Wyndham Lewis, #NFDB
671:The Chairman ignores the individual personalities of his workers and uses them like cattle or horses. That's the basic principle of capitalism, you know. ~ Tetsu Kariya, #NFDB
672:The individual cannot exist on his/her own and the collectivism should respect freedom of conscience. My struggle is about the freedom of thought. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer, #NFDB
673:The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
674:The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
675:What Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #NFDB
676:A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock ~ William James, #NFDB
677:Choose to be who you are. . . The individual who would become a person must at some point take over his entire being - must, that is, choose herself. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
678:If you destroy the creative impulse, you will destroy the intrinsic value of the individual at the same time. But you can still live on as a wall decoration. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
679:In the United States, to an unprecedented degree, the individual's social role has come to be determined not by who he is but by what he can accomplish. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB
680:It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
681:To create change, we must start with the individual and then a group. Do not listen to what the majority is saying; make your own educated judgement. ~ Michael Chatfield, #NFDB
682:Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
683:As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole. ~ Charles Hodge, #NFDB
684:Blaming something else makes that something else cause; and as that cause takes on power, the individual in the same act loses control and becomes effect. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
685:Certain faults are necessary for the existence of the individual. We would resent it if old friends were to get rid of certain peculiarities. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
686:He is what he is, but he is also the past of all that he was and the potentiality of all that he is not. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
687:In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
688:The enemy of all real religion, is human egoism, the egoism of the individual, the egoism of class and nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Religion of Humanity, #NFDB
689:The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
690:"The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
691:Eventually the individual ego’s drive to “make things happen” falls away, replaced with a relaxed, trusting openness to answers as they spontaneously arise. ~ Tosha Silver, #NFDB
692:If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
693:I'm really interested in culture because it is such a powerful human force, particularly in America where we think it's all about the individual. ~ Alison Hawthorne Deming, #NFDB
694:I think when someone is injured in your family, you want to speak to the individual and you want to hear their voice and you want to make sure they are OK. ~ Roger Goodell, #NFDB
695:Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
696:No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
697:Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church; it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history. ~ Huston Smith, #NFDB
698:The greatest memory for me of the 1984 Olympics was not the individual honors, but standing on the podium with my teammates to receive our team gold medal. ~ Mitch Gaylord, #NFDB
699:The individual exists in the Transcendent, but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the individual. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
700:The vision of personalised public services - meeting the individual needs of all our citizens - requires continuing reform in the way services are delivered ~ Gordon Brown, #NFDB
701:They thought it was essential to remain skeptical of all inherited truths, the idea being that the individual must find his own answer to every question. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
702:Time is found in the calibration of the individual to the timing of a collective endeavour, the social grace that less clock-bound societies must practise. ~ Jay Griffiths, #NFDB
703:Today - and it's happening very rapidly - money, wealth, position, birth are of no importance at all. The thing that is important is the individual you are. ~ Emilio Pucci, #NFDB
704:We have no money to bestow upon a class of people that is not taken from the whole people,” he continued; the individual was going to lose out to the group. ~ Amity Shlaes, #NFDB
705:Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others. ~ William Jennings Bryan, #NFDB
706:a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individual and in society as a whole. ~ David Bohm, #NFDB
707:both observing and breaking the rules involve moral choices, and both courses of action reveal something important about the individual involved. Contrary ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
708:God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals? ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
709:I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual. That there is a sacredness to individual rights! ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
710:Second, this law has become a special symbol of our Nation's most important purpose: to fulfill the individual - his freedom, his happiness, his promise. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
711:That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
712:The here, the now and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet and -- from time immemorial--the woman. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, #NFDB
713:The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
714:I believe that the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and to make it possible for him to develop into a creative personality, ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
715:I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
716:So my fifth point is this: spiritual formation is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
717:The goal of Scientology is making the individual capable of living a better life in his own estimation and with his fellows and the playing of a better game. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
718:The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the Cold War, is that the engine of capitalism - the individual - is mightier than any collective. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
719:The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve —an arc of time-experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
720:The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
721:“The rational attitude which permits us to declare objective values as valid at all is not the work of the individual subject, but the product of human history.” ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
722:The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
723:But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
724:Education has to be welcomed as a Spiritual Practice for the establishment of Peace in the individual heart as well as in society including the human commonwealth. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
725:Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
726:The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
727:The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
728:They're the problems of poverty, of the rights of the individual, of the changes brought about by technology. They're the ones that count, more than religion! ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
729:Basically, at this time, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator. ~ Henry Flynt, #NFDB
730:Defeat Them in Detail: The Divide and Conquer Strategy. Look at the parts and determine how to control the individual parts, create dissension and leverage it. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
731:If you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. ~ Michael Jordan, #NFDB
732:In a period of such obsessing political controversy as the present, I believe that I am that strange animal, the individual without any politics at all. ~ Wyndham Lewis, #NFDB
733:Mr. Darwin refers to the multitude of the individual of every species, which, from one cause or another, perish either before, or soon after attaining maturity. ~ Richard Owen, #NFDB
734:Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
735:The attempt of the individual, the living atom, to maintain and aggrandise itself is the whole sense of Desire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #NFDB
736:The brain was the single thing that remained sacred among the Psy. To rewire that would equal the erasure of the individual, making the PsyNet a true hive mind. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
737:The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
738:The individual is identified with the perishable; what can become eternal in the individual pertains exclusively to the separate and unique active Intelligence. ~ Henry Corbin, #NFDB
739:The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
740:With the instincts of convicts who discover the gates of their prison open, the individual oranges rolled in every direction to maximize their chances of escape. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
741:Gordon W. Allport’s book, The Individual and His Religion: “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
742:loneliness is endemic to the human condition, and it is more intense in our society, where we are taught to call our loneliness “freedom of the individual. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
743:Social psychology is especially interested in the effect which the social group has in the determination of the experience and conduct of the individual member. ~ George H Mead, #NFDB
744:So instead of talking about theoretical ways of ending the war and violence, I say that we have to get rid of the individual asholes in each office and situation. ~ Colin Quinn, #NFDB
745:The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Destiny of the Individual, #NFDB
746:The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. ~ Marcel Duchamp, #NFDB
747:The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual. ~ Philip G Zimbardo, #NFDB
748:The State practices "violence," the individual must not do so. The state's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime". ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
749:When I interview people, I look at their values. I always say that the best chance of success is if the individual's values are aligned with the corporate values. ~ Paul Polman, #NFDB
750:Whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man. ~ Max Stirner, #NFDB
751:Don't judge us too harshly—or not, at least, till you have taken the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the individual—we think only of the family. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
752:Education is not a product but a relationship and a process; a relationship between student and lecturer, and process by which knowledge transforms the individual. ~ Kenan Malik, #NFDB
753:ever since the development of the spine, the individual had become paramount, the group disregarded. Ghiselle was only following the downhill path of her species. ~ Tom Perrotta, #NFDB
754:It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
755:The human society is the extension of the individual. Therefore, if we really want a radical change, if we want a better world, we need to change individually. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
756:The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. ~ Grayson L Kirk, #NFDB
757:There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against. ~ Leon Trotsky, #NFDB
758:The State must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
759:To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
760:We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
761:Without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
762:Yoga is a philosophy of discipline and meditation that transforms the spirit and makes the individual a better person in thought, action, knowledge and devotion. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
763:Convenience is for the individual. For us, the community comes first. If electricity or a phone carries us away from community, it also carries us away from God. ~ Olivia Newport, #NFDB
764:In the eyes of God all men, indeed all creatures, may be equal: but the divine law of the individual is to maintain and to defend his individuality. ~ Houston Stewart Chamberlain, #NFDB
765:Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
766:The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of the exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by the land as it is by genes. ~ Barry Lopez, #NFDB
767:The life of the individual must have the same rhythm of significance, the same law of progression as the cosmic life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #NFDB
768:The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden. ~ William James, #NFDB
769:We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
770:When the symbolic images developed by the society no longer work, and the images which do work are not those of the society, the individual has nowhere to turn. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
771:Every society reproduces its culture, its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of organizing experience— in the individual, in the form of personality. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
772:It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
773:Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
774:The individual is a nut so impossible to crack that no theoretic tooth will be able to manage it. And so nothing will be able to justify your defeat, bumblers! ~ Witold Gombrowicz, #NFDB
775:The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
776:There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society ~ Gordon Brown, #NFDB
777:Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed. ~ John Lasseter, #NFDB
778:It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die. ~ S I Hayakawa, #NFDB
779:It's a lot about the individual and it's really up to you, how much you dedicate to the fight and how hard you are working and that's where the outcome will come. ~ Alexis Arguello, #NFDB
780:Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates in him the Easter faith. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
781:Research has deserted the individual and entered the group. The individual worker find the problem too large, not too difficult. He must learn to work with others. ~ Theobald Smith, #NFDB
782:Small groups or communities may be far more oppressive to the individual than larger ones. Men are in many ways freer in large cities than in small villages. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
783:The idea of romanticising the world goes back to the idea of creating a harmonious whole where the individual will feel at one with himself, others and nature. ~ Frederick C Beiser, #NFDB
784:The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
785:The moral climate of any organization, larger than that of the individual, is created hour by hour through the multitude of choices and behaviors of its members. ~ Rushworth Kidder, #NFDB
786:The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
787:This implies that all truly serious and spiritual forms of religion aspire at least implicitly to a contemplative awakening both of the individual and of the group. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
788:Finishing overall champion at the World Series in both the individual and synchro events has given me great confidence and I'm pleased I've been diving with consistency. ~ Tom Daley, #NFDB
789:Healing comes when the individual remembers his or her identity—the purpose chosen in the world of ancestral wisdom—and reconnects with that world of Spirit. ~ Malidoma Patrice Some, #NFDB
790:The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
791:The levelling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The levelling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
792:The two great movements of our century -- towards Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community -- are summed up in Anarchist-Communism. ~ Peter Kropotkin, #NFDB
793:Were not the autonomy of the individual the secret longing of many people, it would scarcely be able to survive the collective suppression either morally or spiritually. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
794:A business enterprise must continue beyond the lifetime of the individual or of the generation to be capable of producing its contributions to economy and to society. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
795:Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
796:I do not believe in the immorality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it. —Albert Einstein ~ S T Abby, #NFDB
797:Is there not a certain satisfaction in the fact that natural limits are set to the life of the individual, so that at the conclusion it may appear as a work of art? ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
798:Little rich boy, that’s all just wind. All that importance-of-the-individual. All that possibility-of-humanity. Today, what people are is just another kind of thing. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
799:Spirituality dawns when individuality vanishes. When our ego becomes aware of something that is higher than it - the individual Spirit, or Soul; then spirituality dawns. ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
800:The aim of the college, for the individual student, is to eliminate the need in his life for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating man. ~ George Horace Lorimer, #NFDB
801:By shifting the balance away from the individual we open the door for the individual. Because we make it obvious that anyone can do it given the right circumstance. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
802:If world peace is to be established, peace in the individual must be established first. Transcendental Meditation directly brings peace in the individual life. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
803:I truly believe that the individual who learns to practice thanksgiving activates within himself and around himself continuous victories and blessings from God. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
804:Mandatory drug sentencing laws strip judges of their traditional role of considering all relevant circumstances in an effort to do justice in the individual case. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
805:Rights have become what the political sovereign or ephemeral master decides to dispense and whatever gratifies the undisciplined cravings and desires of the individual. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
806:Sunday neurosis, for example, is what happens when, without the obligations and commitments of the workweek, the individual realizes how empty he is inside. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
807:The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational. ~ Robert Gilpin, #NFDB
808:The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
809:The process of receiving information for me is seeing, hearing, and feeling their energy in my frame of reference. That doesn't mean I see the individual, unfortunately. ~ John Edward, #NFDB
810:There is only that inevitable danger as long as there is lack of understanding; but the moment the individual understands, there will be no formation of religion. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
811:The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
812:This last possibility [of developing psychosis] is aways present if the individual begins to identify himself too exclusively with that part of him which feels unembodied. ~ R D Laing, #NFDB
813:We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power. ~ Gustav Heinemann, #NFDB
814:When teams are truly learning, not only are they producing extraordinary results, but the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
815:When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more than the individual properties of the separate hemispheres. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry, #NFDB
816:Where else, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the political profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all-including his own career-for the national good? ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
817:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
818:Evil is a word used by the ignorant and the weak. The Dark Side is about survival. It's about unleashing your inner power. It glorifies the strength of the individual. ~ Drew Karpyshyn, #NFDB
819:I love the appropriateness of making a dogmatic statement. I support that, but that is a different level of the individual consciousness than was the source of our music. ~ Eyvind Kang, #NFDB
820:In short, the liberation of the individual conscience from hierarchical and priestly authority opened up space for critical thinking in every field of human activity. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
821:Most ideologies of the world are not for the individual. They're against the individual. Communism, fascism. Any kind of an ism - almost - they're against the individual. ~ Frank Capra, #NFDB
822:Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
823:The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
824:The individual organs follow the same pattern as the whole organism, i.e. they have their period of growth, of stationary, maximum activity and then of aging decline. ~ Wilhelm Ostwald, #NFDB
825:The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
826:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
827:As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty. ~ Carlo Ginzburg, #NFDB
828:Everyone seemed to just accept what was happening. The eradication of the individual, the reduction of the people to a faceless gray mass shouting “heil” on command. ~ Jesper Bugge Kold, #NFDB
829:It is necessarily through the individual Self that we must arrive at the One, for that is the basis of all our experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Modes of the Self, #NFDB
830:Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
831:Spiritual formation in Christ is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual (the heart, will, or spirit) takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
832:The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
833:The reactions of a country-house party to an after-dinner dog-fight in the drawing-room always vary considerably according to the individual natures of its members. Lady ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
834:We do not support the man. We do not support the individual. We support the idea of independent revolution in the Western Hemisphere, free from American intervention ~ Lee Harvey Oswald, #NFDB
835:Yoga is to find union - between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student.. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
836:Creativity is the ability to find new solutions to a problem or new modes of expression; thus it brings into existence something new to the individual and to the culture. ~ Betty Edwards, #NFDB
837:I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
838:Jealousy is the very reverse of understanding, of sympathy, and of generous feeling. Never has jealousy added to character, never does it make the individual big and fine. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
839:Wicca offered real, not pretended, means for the individual to express the art, beauty, and reality of ritual, including magic, in the here and now. --Paul Turnbull ~ Arin Murphy Hiscock, #NFDB
840:Are hackers a threat? The degree of threat presented by any conduct, whether legal or illegal, depends on the actions and intent of the individual and the harm they cause. ~ Kevin Mitnick, #NFDB
841:I heard a lot about the Affordable Care Act, too. About how people in the individual market were getting clobbered with all these increases, which is a legitimate issue. ~ Collin Peterson, #NFDB
842:It is God who is the source of the evolutionary force and God who is the destination ... the ultimate goal of spiritual growth is for the individual to become one with God. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
843:Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior. ~ Mary McCarthy, #NFDB
844:Lippmann declared that “if what is good, what is right, what is true, is only what the individual ‘chooses’ to ‘invent’, then we are outside the traditions of civility. ~ George M Marsden, #NFDB
845:Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
846:The divine Nature, free and perfect and blissful, must be manifested in the individual in order that it may manifest in the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #NFDB
847:The intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - VI, #NFDB
848:The nudity is down to the individual actor or actress. If they feel comfortable and it's done in a way that they feel comfortable doing, then who am I to say anything? ~ Nathalie Emmanuel, #NFDB
849:The pursuit of enlightenment is for the purpose of the world, not merely for the purpose of the individual. Practices for enlightenment must lead to action in the world. ~ Bernie Glassman, #NFDB
850:Ultimately, the source of our problems lies at the level of the individual. If people lack moral values and integrity, no system of laws and regulations will be adequate. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
851:When the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
852:But such a general yearning could not be explained except by attributing the cause of it to the historical training through which the individual Austrian Germans had passed. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
853:Even if the world progresses generally, youth will always begin at the beginning, and the epochs of the world's cultivation will be repeated in the individual. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
854:I have in my own work developed a theory of culture in which the individual is the bearer of culture and the repository of knowledge, rather than the society as a whole. ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
855:I realized in order to be involved in health policy, you really had to understand more than the individual patient that we as physicians, are taught to think about. ~ Risa J Lavizzo Mourey, #NFDB
856:Love is a simple practice yet it is very beneficial for the individual who practices it as well as for the community in which he lives, for the nation, and for the whole world ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
857:Someday our grandchildren will very likely look back at the individual, selfish control of the wealth of the world by a small elite the same way we view slavery today. ~ Corinne McLaughlin, #NFDB
858:The supreme belief of our society is the dignity and freedom of the individual. To the respect of that dignity, to the defense of that freedom, all effort is pledged. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
859:The universe is there as a truth in God even though the individual soul may have shut its eyes to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #NFDB
860:You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
861:A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
862:As the guardian of our rights, the Supreme Court makes decisions every year which either protect the individual or leave him at the mercy of more powerful forces in our society. ~ Herb Kohl, #NFDB
863:I'm not out trying to prove anything. All I'm trying to do is go out there and help my team any way I can to win. I don't get caught up in the individual stats or the awards. ~ Steve McNair, #NFDB
864:In order to be a valid immediate threat, the individual must exhibit three things and another fourth element is necessary. These are Intent, Means, Opportunity and Preclusion. ~ Rory Miller, #NFDB
865:So much the worse, it may be, for a particular meeting: but the meeting is the individual, which on evolution principles, must be sacrificed for the development of the race. ~ Arthur Cayley, #NFDB
866:So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual. ~ Taiye Selasi, #NFDB
867:The body-consciousness is a patient servant and can be in its large reserve of possibilities a potent instrument of the individual life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
868:The group-man follows in the wake of the individual and is always far behind the highest individual development. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Drive towards Economic Centralisation, #NFDB
869:The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
870:War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state... What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men! ~ Heinrich von Treitschke, #NFDB
871:Whether the individual fights this battle in ways such that men call him good or such that they call him evil is determined by the measure and makeup of his intellect. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
872:It is important for the common good to foster individuality: for only the individual can produce the new ideas which the community needs for its continuous improvement and ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
873:It's absolutely not acceptable for people to argue that, if we are going to do anything about climate change at all, well, the responsibility lies solely with the individual. ~ Peter Garrett, #NFDB
874:It’s easy to use the label as justification for remaining the same. Sören Kierkegaard wrote, “Once you label me, you negate me.” When the individual must live up to the label, ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
875:My father's subject: the relationship between history and the individual. He believes everybody is an 'excretion' of his or her environment. That's the word he uses. Excretion. ~ Danzy Senna, #NFDB
876:The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won't in the end affirm or deny anything ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
877:The difference between a heel and a coward and one who jumps in the fire and one who runs away from the fire; is up to the individual in how they manage a given situation. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
878:The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
879:The individual is far better-positioned to wait patiently for the right pitch while paying no regard to what others are doing, which is almost impossible for professionals. ~ Jeremy Grantham, #NFDB
880:The individual is the only reality. The further we move away from the individual toward abstract ideas about Homo Sapiens, the more likely we are to fall into error. P. 45 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
881:The individual who refuses to defend his rights when called by his government deserves to be a slave, and must be punished as an enemy of his country and a friend to her foe ~ Andrew Jackson, #NFDB
882:The need for education for the individual student should be recognized... home, neighborhood. But instead of that, we have the future being determined by standardized testing. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
883:Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #NFDB
884:Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
885:At best, I think of a director as a magnet. You get all the metal fillings in all the individual actors and crew, and get those filings moving toward your magnetic direction. ~ Rebecca Miller, #NFDB
886:Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard. ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
887:human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with "other" cultures. ~ Edward W Said, #NFDB
888:Mascara is my daily essential. I pile it on top and bottom lashes during the day. If I'm going out, I'll add the individual Eylure lashes at the outer corners for more drama. ~ Ashley Madekwe, #NFDB
889:One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
890:The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
891:The result is one of the greatest paradoxes of modern history: that an economic system designed to offer infinite choice to the individual has ended up homogenizing humanity. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
892:For the task of the psychotherapist is to bring about a reconciliation between individual feeling and social norms without, however, sacrificing the integrity of the individual. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
893:Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
894:If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. ~ Murray N Rothbard, #NFDB
895:If you ask me, any religion that takes the end of the world as one of its central tenets is more or less bogus. In my view, the only thing that ever ‘ends’ is the individual. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
896:My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that's why I, I believe in the individual. ~ Jack Kirby, #NFDB
897:She thought about him all the time - not so much about Doug the individual, but rather about the nature of love, and the shock of learning how quickly it could disappear. ~ J Courtney Sullivan, #NFDB
898:So conceived, the English police force served to emphasize a fundamental truth about the English law, which is that it exists not to control the individual but to free him. The ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
899:The individual is not a mere cell of the collective existence; he would not cease to exist if separated or expelled from the collective mass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #NFDB
900:The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
901:Training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual for participation. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
902:Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
903:Of this be wary. Honor and fame are often regarded as interchangeable. Both involve an appraisal of the individual. . . but I suggest this difference. Fame is morally neutral. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
904:One effective “trick” in caring for the soul is to look with special attention and openness at what the individual rejects, and then to speak favorably for that rejected element. ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
905:Systems of self-governance, in the individual and at every scale beyond, are based on understanding that ordinances, orders, and enforcement deal with an absence of true governance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
906:The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
907:What the members of the body are in the individual being, reasonable beings are in the same way even though separate, because they are formed to cooperate in one common work. ~ Mar-cus Aurelius, #NFDB
908:Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it.... Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist. It is the soul of the individual that counts. ~ Emily Carr, #NFDB
909:In government-directed economies, the collective takes priority over the individual. The moral ideal is equal results. That approach could not be further removed from the real world. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
910:it is a wretched thing when amusement becomes a vocation. Amusement should be used to do us good "like a medicine"; it must never be used as the food of the individual. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
911:Love's the sum total of all the little things you can never really put your finger on. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops but you get warm. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
912:Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual. ~ Georg Simmel, #NFDB
913:People are first and foremost Republicans, first and foremost Anarchists, first and foremost a man or woman, and that is a mistake. It hurts the individual and it hurts the whole. ~ Peter Krause, #NFDB
914:The universal particularises itself in the individual; the individual contains in himself all the generalities of the universal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
915:THREE DAYS BLURRED by in that peculiar way that happens after loss, as though the individual affected stands still on a busy city street while life continues on at its usual pace. ~ Nesly Clerge, #NFDB
916:To sum up once more: Awareness, will, practice, tolerance of fear and of new experience, they are all necessary if transformation of the individual is to succeed. ~ Erich Fromm, The Art of Being, #NFDB
917:Where did we get the idea of insultin' folks by pointin' out their age? ... It seems that we think youth is some special accomplishment brought about by the individual himself! ~ Alice Childress, #NFDB
918:According to Jung, the symbol is ‘a third thing’ that lies outside of the opposites; creativity must come from outside the individual, so that the whole self is a matter of discovery. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
919:Beth feels likes this storm. Constant and persistent as a whole, but the more I get close and try to clutch the individual drops of rain, the more the water falls out of my hands. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
920:Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality. ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
921:In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #NFDB
922:In the end, "the modern" is a person who understands that, for good or ill, the responsibility for spirituality has shifted from tribal religion to the shoulders of the individual. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
923:Its leading thinkers embraced a Renaissance humanism that put its faith in the dignity of the individual and in the aspiration to find happiness on this earth through knowledge. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
924:That is why we are so often horrified, or terrified, by the modern world: a machine for destroying the individual or mechanizing him. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Convergence of the Universe, #NFDB
925:The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo—the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
926:The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in his development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever he had to make an important decision. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey, #NFDB
927:The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
928:The theory and practice of revolution is bound to the way the individual emerges as a theoretical possibility and phenomenological actuality in and out of the revolutionary ensemble. ~ Fred Moten, #NFDB
929:Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
930:You can take power from others; you can steal it. It is not a very high-grade power. It will give you a certain amount of access to a better life; but it corrupts the individual. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
931:As a culture, we turn away from people just when they are in times of change. That's when most communities used to embrace people, so the individual and the culture both benefited. ~ Michael Meade, #NFDB
932:Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
933:In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief. ~ Georg Simmel, #NFDB
934:It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
935:The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
936:The only true hope for civilization-the conviction of the individual that his inner life can affect outward events and that, whether or not he does so he is responsible for them. ~ Stephen Spender, #NFDB
937:The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
938:There is no true liberty for the individual except as he finds it in the liberty of all. There is no true security for the individual except as he finds it in the security for all. ~ Edwin Markham, #NFDB
939:These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls. ~ Jacques Delors, #NFDB
940:Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
941:for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
942:Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment. ~ Jerzy Kosinski, #NFDB
943:Humans are very proud of their changes, but every imagined transformation turns out to be a new set of excuses for behaving exactly as the individual has always behaved.> < ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
944:In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more ofthese drones perish, the better for the hive. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
945:I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
946:Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
947:Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
948:The autonomy of the individual appears to be complemented & enhanced by the movement of the group; while the effectiveness of the group seems to depend on the freedom of the individual. ~ Hakim Bey, #NFDB
949:The community exists by the individual, for its mind and life and body are constituted by the mind and life and body of its composing individuals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #NFDB
950:The individual ought undoubtedly to acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community—or, to speak more accurately, to the authorities who have the care of the community’s welfare. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
951:The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. History recks nothing of human logic ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB
952:To deny the individual agency of those caught up in the system – their capacity to overcome seemingly impossible odds – would be to deny an essential element of their humanity. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
953:What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct. ~ George H Mead, #NFDB
954:When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111) ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
955:Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
956:Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. The best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
957:The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB
958:The penal code deals with things like theft, false testimony, adultery, fornication, etc. and then there's the law of the state, the law of the individual and the law of the public. ~ Anjem Choudary, #NFDB
959:There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
960:The universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the universal mind. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
961:The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
962:we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
963:We're constantly making choices about the way we spend our time, from major seasons to the individual moments in our lives. We're also living with the consequences of those choices ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
964:Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God but not in God’s religion? ~ Ian Rankin, #NFDB
965:All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
966:"I have been astonished to find how accurately the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard pictured the dilemma of the individual more than a century ago, with deep psychological insight." ~ Carl Rogers, #NFDB
967:I look at the textures, surfaces, colors, and the individual objects in the painting. And then I wonder: what are the relationships among them? Those relationships are everything. ~ Mordicai Gerstein, #NFDB
968:In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
969:In these times of social upheaval and rapid change, it is desirable to know much more than we do about the individual human being, for so much depends upon his mental and moral qualities. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
970:"It's not the state that's the place of salvation, it's the individual psyche. There's an ethic that goes along with that: it's within the individual that redemption is manifested." ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
971:Peer reviewers were then asked to rate (using a slider on the screen) how well they knew that particular project and how large the individual’s impact was, and to add any comments. Over ~ Laszlo Bock, #NFDB
972:Penance should be but the means to increase virtue according to the needs of the individual, and according to what the soul sees she can do in the measure of her own possibility. ~ Catherine of Siena, #NFDB
973:The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
974:The pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container does not depend upon the individual histories of the molecules composing it,” says the French existentialist philosopher. ~ John Dos Passos, #NFDB
975:The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
976:The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light. ~ Frank O Connor, #NFDB
977:What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent. ~ Stephen Spender, #NFDB
978:The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
979:Well, I have also believed in empowering the individual and believe there is a degree of inertia in big government that hampers the ability to respond to a rapidly evolving crisis. ~ Michael C Burgess, #NFDB
980:When individuals change, society will change. And when society changes, the whole world will change. The welfare of the individual is bound up with the welfare of society as a whole. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
981:With them the individual counted for nothing. No one was irreplaceable, because they drew no distinction between one man and another... In this community there was harmony, but no love. ~ Michael Ende, #NFDB
982:"It's not the state that's the place of salvation, it's the individual psyche. There's an ethic that goes along with that: it's within the individual that redemption is manifested." ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
983:May not the explanation be this, that ideal truth does not depend upon the individual mind of man, but on the universal mind which comprehends the individual? ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man, #NFDB
984:Psychologically, without valid cultural myths, there are no longer forms of guidance for the individual to help navigate the stages of life or to come to terms with the deeper psyche. ~ Keiron Le Grice, #NFDB
985:The aim of Zen training is to attain the state of consciousness which occurs when the individual ego is emptied of itself and becomes identified with the infinite reality of all things. ~ Anne Bancroft, #NFDB
986:The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #NFDB
987:The evolution of animal behavior does constitute a learning process, but it is learning by the species, not by the individual, and the fruits of this learning process are encoded in DNA. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
988:This – some say – confirms the hypothesis that each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures and without form, and the individual cities fill it up. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
989:...when we understand how much culture and history and the world outside of the individual matter to professional success--then ... We have a way to successes out of the unsucessful. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
990:It's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together. ~ Alexander McQueen, #NFDB
991:I would say democracy once meant an organizational society and a state, in which the individual citizen is - feels - responsible, and acts responsibly, and participates in decision-making. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
992:Jung said that if there is something wrong with society, there is something wrong with the individual; and if there is something wrong with the individual, there is something wrong with me. ~ Liz Greene, #NFDB
993:Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions-as ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
994:Tantric Zen is for the individual who is in love with both the finite and the infinite, who gets a kick out of this weird transitory world and at the same time, wants to step beyond it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
995:The question is not whether or not there should be a cult of the individual, but rather whether or not the individual concerned represents the truth, if he does then he should be worshiped. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
996:What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That's where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you've gone through, and where you hope to go. ~ Wendell Pierce, #NFDB
997:Without writing, what would I have become? Nothing. In China the individual used to be treated as a screw or a small cog in the revolutionary machine. I wanted to be a human being with a voice. ~ Ha Jin, #NFDB
998:"Yet the real carrier of life is the individual. He alone feels happiness, he alone has virtue and responsibility and any ethics whatever. The masses and the state have nothing of the kind." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
999:A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge—that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she maybe. ~ Robert Trivers, #NFDB
1000:Greaser ' didn't have anything to do with it. My buddy over there wouldn't have done it. Maybe you would have done the same thing, maybe a friend of yours wouldn't have. It's the individual. ~ S E Hinton, #NFDB
1001:I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
1002:Sex attraction is so purely a question of the taste of the individual that the wise man never argues about it. He accepts its vagaries as part of the human mystery, and leaves it at that. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1003:The English historian Thomas Carlyle defined a person’s religion as the set of values evident in his or her actions, regardless of what the individual would claim to believe when asked. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
1004:There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of an individual person and the interests of the collective. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
1005:What distinguishes Shambhala is its intention of trying to create a society based upon certain principles. So, Shambhala's focus is not just on the individual, but on society as a whole. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
1006:Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power. ~ Friedrich Ratzel, #NFDB
1007:...believing in Jesus Christ brings out the individual tallents of men in a way that is not otherwise possible, ... I percieve that those who worship the Creator are exceedingly creative. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1008:If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
1009:Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1010:Rights are a protection from society. But only by fulfilling their obligations to society can the individual give meaning to that protection.
(V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium) ~ John Ralston Saul,#NFDB
1011:"When the individual is in conflict within himself he must inevitably create conflict without, and only he can bring about peace within himself and so in the world, for he is the world." ~ J. Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1012:But the fact is, no matter how good the teacher, how small the class, how focused on quality education the school may be none of this matters if we ignore the individual needs of our students. ~ Roy Barnes, #NFDB
1013:In his self-integration the soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #NFDB
1014:My style is where you see the individual and where a personality is communicated through actions, decisions, single objects and facts, where the whole draws together to form a history ~ Martin Kippenberger, #NFDB
1015:Politics and the affairs of State are dissociated from the orbit of the individual, and in so far as they cannot be repossessed as his living private property they must be rendered impotent. ~ John Carroll, #NFDB
1016:"The fact that the individual feels himself or the members of his family or the esteemed friends in his circle to be important merely underlines the slightly comic subjectivity of his feeling." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1017:To punish the individual for the sins of the system makes no sense. We're responsible for changing it, yes. But we can't actually invent another universe, so we have to start where we are. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1018:When the individual is in conflict within himself he must inevitably create conflict without, and only he can bring about peace within himself and so in the world, for he is the world. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1019:When you talk about obesity, there's so many things that can cause that. It can be a medical thing, or down to the individual. There's a lot of other things involved than eating a Mars bar. ~ Peter Shilton, #NFDB
1020:Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual. ~ William James, #NFDB
1021:Mass assemblies are quite incapable of independent action. Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals. ~ Sebastian Haffner, #NFDB
1022:Paying too much attention to the individual visible victim rather than to the numbers can lead us to spend all our resources on a fraction of the problem, and therefore save many fewer lives. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1023:The individual soul lives here by the All-Soul and depends upon it; the All-Soul very evidently does not exist by the individual or depend upon it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Order of the Worlds, #NFDB
1024:The strains and stresses suffered by the individual in society are grounded in the normal functioning of that society (and of the individual!) rather than in its disturbances and diseases. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1025:This tension between the individual’s personal creative contribution and the leverage of the group is a dynamic that exists in all creative environments, but this would be my first taste of it. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1026:Yes, you are right, those of us who are known to everyone today are romantics. We are. We are poets. But we are individuals, with an immense faith in the individual and a love of the individual. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1027:At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences. ~ Lawrence Kohlberg, #NFDB
1028:In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represents statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual. ~ Leonard Peikoff, #NFDB
1029:Most Americans in both red and blue states reject and resent the message being sent by Hollywood and some in the media that values are subjective, to be defined by the individual and not by God. ~ Trent Lott, #NFDB
1030:Mr. Lapid, making an electrifying feature directing debut, traces the line between the group and the individual in a story that can be read as a commentary on the world as much as on Israel. ~ Manohla Dargis, #NFDB
1031:No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society ~ Irving Howe, #NFDB
1032:The individual problem is the world problem. Therefore let us return to the problem of individual perfection and the establishing of peace in the heart and in the mind of the individual. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1033:The psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1034:A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1035:A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge - that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she might be. ~ Robert Trivers, #NFDB
1036:Engineering is the art of the practical and depends more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual engineer. When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1037:Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs. ~ Tracy Chapman, #NFDB
1038:I believe one thing powerfully- that the only creative thing our species has is the individual, lonely mind... The group ungoverned by individual thinking is a horrible destructive principle. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1039:In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual. ~ William Robertson Smith, #NFDB
1040:In science, moreover, the work of the individual is so bound up with that of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries that it appears almost as an impersonal product of his generation. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1041:The egotistical ambition to always want to earn more money harms both the company and the individual himself. That is the biggest weakness of many managers - the financial crisis has proven this. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1042:The individual self and the universal self are one; in every world, in every being, in each thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago,#NFDB
1043:The new century will see unimaginable levels of wastefulness and extravagance, but it will also be an age in which the individual human being acquires a true and universally recognised value. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
1044:The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1045:The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
1046:the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1047:"Although its bases are in themselves relatively unknown and unconscious, the ego is a conscious factor par excellence. It is even acquired, empirically speaking, during the individual's lifetime." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1048:Among the millions of nerve cells that clothe parts of the brain there runs a thread. It is the thread of time, the thread that has run through each succeeding wakeful hour of the individual. ~ Wilder Penfield, #NFDB
1049:I don't want to say that the creativity would give out - I can't imagine what argument I would bring forward for that. But I think that there's something on the individual level that's a limitation. ~ Todd May, #NFDB
1050:Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1051:No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1052:Only a cheap politician, greedy for political gain, would try to single out one individual for blame. The fault lies not with the individual but with the system, and that system is Richard Nixon. ~ Pat Paulsen, #NFDB
1053:There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation. ~ Marcus Garvey, #NFDB
1054:What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his liberty, and his property ~ Fr d ric Bastiat, #NFDB
1055:But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1056:Even the structure of the atom has been found by the mind. Therefore the mind is subtler than the atom. That which is behind the mind, namely the individual soul, is subtler than the mind. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1057:Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1058:In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
1059:Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1060:mass surveillance kills dissent in a deeper and more important place as well: in the mind, where the individual trains him- or herself to think only in line with what is expected and demanded. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
1061:One possessing Vairagya does not understand by Atman the individual ego but the All-pervading Lord, residing as the Self and Internal Ruler in all. He is perceivable by all as the sum total. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1062:Our broken society is not born out of the triumph of the individual, but out of his effacement. He vanishes, she vanishes, ask them who they are and they will offer you a wallet or a child. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1063:Rising from the debris of our lost values is the new value on the individual. The me generation has given to a me world. The question is, how will the church, the ultimate we organization adjust? ~ Randy Frazee, #NFDB
1064:Sometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence. ~ Alison Hawthorne Deming, #NFDB
1065:That society exists to frustrate the individual may be seen from its attitude to work. It is only morally acceptable if you do not want to do it. If you do want to, it becomes a personal pleasure. ~ Celia Green, #NFDB
1066:The awareness that everything is connected in the participatory reality of life is expressed on the individual level by compassion and on the collective level by universal responsibility. These ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1067:The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community and so on. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1068:The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1069:the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1070:The true resurrection is the lifting up of Truth in the individual; the resurrection of the eternal in the temporal; the resurrection of virtue always latent in man. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1071:Yoga stilled the fluctuations of the individual mind’s helpless thought waves, allowing it to see the one unchanging energy, the unborn, un-aging, un-ailing, sorrow-less and deathless state within ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
1072:You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
1073:As I grow older I will come to question 12-step programs, see their failures, all the ways they do not reduce the harms of addiction by making their harms accrue to the individual, alone. ~ Patrisse Khan Cullors, #NFDB
1074:I have served one idea, marched under one banner - war against all imposed authority - against every kind of deprivation of freedom, in the name of the absolute independence of the individual. ~ Alexander Herzen, #NFDB
1075:Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1076:The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1077:the key problem of psychology is that of the specific kind of relatedness of the individual towards the world and not that of the satisfaction or frustration of this or that instinctual need per se ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1078:All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1079:A title or promotion does not make anyone a leader. Leadership emerges from the character, qualities, and capacities of the individual. Make no mistake about it, authentic leadership is personal. ~ George B Bradt, #NFDB
1080:The confidence that God is mindful of the individual is of tremendous value in dealing with the disease of fear, for it gives us a sense of worth, of belonging, and of at homeness in the universe. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1081:The Lord's way builds individual self esteem and develops and heals the dignity of the individual, whereas the world's way depresses the individual's view of himself and causes deep resentment ~ Spencer W Kimball, #NFDB
1082:There is a crying need today to have this truth heralded throughout the land that youth especially may appreciate and hold the freedom of the individual as sacred as did our revolutionary fathers. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
1083:But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1084:Dr Stone wasn’t insane; Stone was a healer. He held down the right job. Probably he healed many people and in many ways. He adapted his therapy to the individual, not the individual to the therapy. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1085:God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
1086:Human life is something that comes to us from beyond this world, and the purpose of our society is to cherish it and to enable the individual to attain the highest achievement of which he is capable ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
1087:Mechanism rapidly overflowing the limits of the individual, provincial and national work, to rise to the dimensions of a planetary operation. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phyletic Structure of the Human Group, #NFDB
1088:On Andrew Jackson: "His native strength compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him a sharper tool. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
1089:that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1090:the individual has the key to change themselves. It’s buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we’re the only ones who can use it. And there, ~ Lisa Jewell, #NFDB
1091:The individual who is actively engaged in a struggle, or in striving toward an important goal, does not come up with pessimistic philosophies concerning the meaninglessness or the futility of life. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
1092:Plato was suspicious of writing which seems to remove knowledge from the present moment of the individual and lodge it elsewhere, in books, which are inert and cannot defend themselves against fools. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1093:The individual who violates the rules in a zealous search for an answer to the problem may overstep the bounds and thereby suffer the loss of his relationships to the organized medical profession. ~ Morris Fishbein, #NFDB
1094:While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1095:A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1096:Human life is something that comes to us from beyond this world, and the purpose of our society is to cherish it and to enable the individual to attain the highest achievement of which he is capable ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1097:In the civil society, the individual is recognized and accepted as more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group; rather, he is a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
1098:In the world, as it is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual progressively towards the truth-consciousness.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life,#NFDB
1099:It is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #NFDB
1100:It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
1101:that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1102:The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1103:The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1104:The spectre of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual - always an annoyance to totality - ceases to exist. ~ Philip Gourevitch, #NFDB
1105:To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands. ~ Joseph Goebbels, #NFDB
1106:By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1107:I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1108:Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1109:Science has little interest in, and tolerance for, the testimony of the individual; in this it is, curiously, much like an organized religion, which has a big problem crediting direct revelation too. ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
1110:The fundamental idea of modern capitalism is not the right of the individual to possess and enjoy what he has earned, but the ;thesis that the exercise of this right redounds to the general good. ~ Ralph Barton Perry, #NFDB
1111:"Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual's lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1112:Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
1113:It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. ~ D W Winnicott, #NFDB
1114:There’s surprisingly little difference between a candidate with six months of experience and one with six years. The real difference comes from the individual’s dedication, personality, and intelligence. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1115:Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1116:According to Gerber, the Shariah principle here was unmistakably individualist: “The rights of the state are depicted as opposed to the rights of the individual, and the latter are found to be superior. ~ Mustafa Akyol, #NFDB
1117:Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed. ~ Ben Shahn, #NFDB
1118:. . . each human being has originally a feeling of wholeness . . . from the Self . . . the totality of the psyche . . . the individualized ego-consciousness emerges as the individual grows up. P. 120 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
1119:The essential thing, the ultimate goal of politics and thought, is a bigger life for the individual. A bigger life – that remains the main objective…to increase our divine attributes to have moral life. ~ Roberto Unger, #NFDB
1120:The individual increasingly comes to know who he is through the stand he takes when he expresses his ideas, values, beliefs, and convictions, and through the declaration and ownership of his feelings. ~ Clark Moustakas, #NFDB
1121:There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1122:A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1123:And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1124:Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
1125:Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1126:Governments are wasting billions of dollars on attempting to predict events that are produced by interdependent systems and are therefore not statistically understandable at the individual level. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1127:Initiation, or the process of undergoing an expansion of consciousness, is part of the normal process of evolutionary development, viewed on a large scale, and not from the standpoint of the individual. ~ Alice A Bailey, #NFDB
1128:Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
1129:the entropy of an isolated system always increases, and that when two systems are joined together, the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1130:The free market promotes self-worth, self-sufficiency, shared values, and honest dealings, which enhance the individual, the family, and the community. It discriminates against no race, religion, or gender. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
1131:"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1132:At the end of the progress, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working. ~ Sri AurobindoThe Synthesis of Yoga, #NFDB
1133:Beliefs are states which occur when bodies (including brains) are directed towards something, from an idea to a plant. Beliefs are formed by the individual as she or he engages in language and culture. ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
1134:The individual, standing alone, cannot develop; he depends on the support and assistance of the group to which he belongs. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Shall India be Free? - National Development and Foreign Rule, #NFDB
1135:The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
1136:To Aristotle or to Plato the State is, above all, a large and powerful educative agency which gives the individual increased opportunities of self-development and greater capacities for the enjoyment of life. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1137:what was the right level of prosperity, the level that banished dire need but did not satiate, the level that did not threaten the artist in the individual? And how did one stop when one arrived at it? ~ Nayantara Sahgal, #NFDB
1138:Are we to say that any individual who's on steroids that has an angry moment is due to steroids? What about the individual who gets angry and kills someone who's not on steroids? What do we blame it on now? ~ Jose Canseco, #NFDB
1139:Free agency is a gift of God....The world does not comprehend the significance of that divine gift to the individual. It is as inherent as intelligence which, we are told, has never been nor can be created ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
1140:Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1141:A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
1142:becoming a sort of outrage perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh every day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1143:Darkness came like a black flag waved over the canyon, drawing back the grayness from the shores of the city, then pushing forward the individual specks of street and building lights as though in recompense. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
1144:Jung observed that the work of being an evolved human being consists of three parts. Psychology can bring us insight, but then, he insisted, come the moral qualities of the individual: courage and endurance. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
1145:The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #NFDB
1146:The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1147:Education is the preparation of the individual for reciprocal union with society; the preparation of the individual so that he can help his fellow-men and in return receive and appreciate their help. ~ William Torrey Harris, #NFDB
1148:Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1149:He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore, #NFDB
1150:I think it's an aggregation of all of the small acts that are really transformative. I think a group of small acts transform the individual. And maybe when the individual transforms, collectively we transform. ~ Chris Abani, #NFDB
1151:It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption. ~ Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, #NFDB
1152:Philosophy not only begins with the individual, but also ends with the individual. For an individual is the final fact of life. He is an end in himself, and not a means to other creations of the human mind. The ~ Lin Yutang, #NFDB
1153:The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1154:There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1155:This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy. ~ Henry A Wallace, #NFDB
1156:Wise leaders know that if an individual doesn't count, the institution doesn't count for much either. Put mathematically, if the individual is a zero, together a lot of zeros add up to a whole lot of nothing. ~ Diane Dreher, #NFDB
1157:At the individual level Swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment, ceaseless self-purification and growing self-reliance.… It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1158:It is only through the individual mind that the mass can arrive at a clear knowledge and creation of the thing it held in its subconscient self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #NFDB
1159:Our imagination makes us intensely conscious of a life we must live which transcends the individual life and contradicts the biological meaning of the instinct of self-preservation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man, #NFDB
1160:She’s a pile of nanites working together to duplicate the individual parts of a teenage girl on the cellular level, and they don’t realize there’s no actual girl left. They rebuilt a working model of a corpse. ~ Peter Clines, #NFDB
1161:The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual. This being the situation, it is clear that you cannot develop your personality at all in Hinduism. ~ B R Ambedkar, #NFDB
1162:The secret of artistic creation and the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of 'participation mystique' - to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1163:This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1164:At the individual level Swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment , ceaseless self purification and growing self-reliance.... It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1165:Buddha spoke of remembering former lifetimes, and some mistakenly take this to mean that the Buddha after enlightenment and the individual he was in a former lifetime are one and the same, and thus permanent. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1166:Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
1167:The individual can take initiatives without anybody's permission. Only individuals can think. Only the individual disregards his fears and commits himself exclusively to reforming the human environment. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
1168:There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1169:To the less privileged it was this arbitrariness that made the regime's power feel so oppressive. There were no clear principles or regulations which enabled the individual to challenge authority or the state. ~ Orlando Figes, #NFDB
1170:We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
1171:Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
1172:An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation with the right of secession. The individual or the family or the small group as a unit instead of the State. ~ Ammon Hennacy, #NFDB
1173:And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others. ~ Erving Goffman, #NFDB
1174:A realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1175:Christ’s humor is always redemptive, never mocking the individual. But He is sharp and sarcastic in His derision of those institutions such as Pharisaism, which posture in their self-made self-importance. Wisdom ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
1176:For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual. ~ Georg Simmel, #NFDB
1177:Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside. ~ Brian Ferneyhough, #NFDB
1178:If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
1179:It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. ~ Donald Woods Winnicott, #NFDB
1180:It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring ~ Alfred Adler, #NFDB
1181:Language is partly something originally given, partly that which develops freely. And just as the individual... can never reach the point at which he becomes absolutely independent ... so too with language. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1182:Much of our American progress has been the product of the individual who had an idea; pursued it; fashioned it; tenaciously clung to it against all odds; and then produced it, sold it, and profited from it. ~ Hubert H Humphrey, #NFDB
1183:People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights - this is the true left in the United States. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
1184:When a country goes to war, men can no longer operate free and open laboratories. The Government would like to know what you are doing. Businesses became corporations, the individual thinker became unpatriotic. ~ Samantha Hunt, #NFDB
1185:"Be the change you want to see in the world"...and, if you can't be that change, then either get out of the way of the person who wants to be that change or support the individual with your financial resources. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1186:If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor. ~ Louis O Kelso, #NFDB
1187:Liberals worry that what's best for the individual might not be better for the public at large. But that philosophy assumes something vicious about each and every one of us. It assumes we only care about ourselves. ~ Allen West, #NFDB
1188:Man's Chief purpose is the creation and preservation of values; that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
1189:No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1190:People have been frying foods since Jesus was on this planet, and there is always going to be greasy, fried, salty, sugary food. It is up to the individual to walk in and say, 'I don't want those fries today.' ~ Richard Simmons, #NFDB
1191:Positive thinking” does indeed “work” when it is consistent with the individual’s self-image. It literally cannot “work” when it is inconsistent with the self-image—until the self-image itself has been changed.) ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
1192:The Bhagavad-Gita changes this. It takes the Warrior Ethos and elevates it to a loftier and nobler plane—the plane of the individual’s inner life, to his struggle to align himself with his own higher nature. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1193:There's quite a big gap when it comes to that dual identity of mother and child, or even a pregnant woman, or a nursing woman. It kind of begs the question of that very strong Western idea of the individual self. ~ Anne Enright, #NFDB
1194:The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1195:We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1196:Your dharma is what kind of work you should be doing, what kind of people you should associate with, whether you should have a teacher or not. Dharma encompasses all things and it is specific to the individual. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1197:And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1198:Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator. ~ Paulo Freire, #NFDB
1199:It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is fro+m among such individuals that all human failures spring. ~ Alfred Adler, #NFDB
1200:It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1201:The individual and social instincts,—the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1202:The individual human is still the creature who can wonder, who can be enchanted by a sonata, who can place symbols together to make poetry to gladden our heart, who can view a sunrise with a sense of majesty and awe. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1203:The public wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and everything would turn to gold. Little did they realise that the individual is crucifying herself inside because she didn't think she was good enough. ~ Princess Diana, #NFDB
1204:The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate. ~ Max Horkheimer, #NFDB
1205:The story of man is the history, first, of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to permit communal life; and second, of the emancipation of the individual within that system of necessary restraints. ~ Abe Fortas, #NFDB
1206:Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
1207:Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
1208:I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
1209:Once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance. The hero's symbolic death becomes, as it were, the achievement of that maturity. P. 103 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
1210:Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
1211:Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity. ~ Irving Langmuir, #NFDB
1212:Solitude is so necessary both for society and for the individual that when society fails to provide sufficient solitude to develop the inner life of the persons who compose it, they rebel and seek false solitudes. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1213:It is a striking example of modern conservatism's emphasis on the moral worth of the individual. ... When I look at the debate over Elian...I have to say that rarely have I been prouder of my fellow conservatives. ~ Ramesh Ponnuru, #NFDB
1214:It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress. ~ Bill Sali, #NFDB
1215:Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
1216:Thus the anima component of the personality is connected with the “voice” which expresses the creative element in the individual, contrasted with the conventionality of the father, of the collective, of conscience. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
1217:To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. "He must be," they say, "therefore we believe He is. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1218:What I like or dislike in music is my internal affair. I never want an audience out there to be influenced because John said. I don't want to have to endure that kind of nonsense. I work for the art of the individual. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
1219:Because someone is a lama or is part of a monastic order or claims to be part of a succession, doesn't really mean they know anything. Always examine the individual's consciousness, their ability to transmit light. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1220:But, the other thing is, is that I feel very confident in the individual pilots. They are tremendous individuals. They are individuals that have sworn to protect and defend our very citizens. That is why we served... ~ Hugh Shelton, #NFDB
1221:In America, it is about the individual. Self-realization. Go to the grocery store, the doctor’s office, open any magazine, and it is self, self, self. But in my culture it is about community and family.” Margaret ~ Elizabeth Strout, #NFDB
1222:Jung went so far as to assert that it had become “a political and social duty” to perceive “the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within. ~ Francisco Cant, #NFDB
1223:Learning’s purest form,” Jones replied, “is realized by the individual who continues a quest beyond the classroom, fueled by a passion to discern wisdom. Wisdom—genuine truth—holds the key to refining one’s thinking. ~ Andy Andrews, #NFDB
1224:Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
1225:Nonviolence is a method that transforms, first of all, the individual once you understand it and embrace it. It begins with you and, if you can, about transforming individuals so that they love unconditionally. ~ Coretta Scott King, #NFDB
1226:Psychotherapy and medication both produce similar changes in brain functioning.18 There is a biochemical process in depression, but the individual has been made susceptible to depression through life experiences. ~ Richard O Connor, #NFDB
1227:The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. To refuse the call means stagnation. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1228:The machine is impersonal, it takes the pride away from a piece of work, the individual merits and defects that go along with allwork that is not done by a machine--which is to say, its little bit of humanity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1229:The revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin. We can't stop here. We must go on. We must take the risks. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1230:The thesis of etatism that the members of the government and its assistants are more intelligent than the people, and that they know better what is good for the individual than he himself knows, is pure nonsense. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1231:What would happen to the individual if all the functions of the body were placed under the control of the consciousness is what would happen to a nation in which all individual activities were directed by government. ~ Henry George, #NFDB
1232:Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1233:Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good. ~ Arthur Peacocke, #NFDB
1234:In relation to the individual the Supreme is our own true and highest self, that which ultimately we are in our essence, that of which we are in our manifested nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #NFDB
1235:I was raised to believe in the innate goodness of humanity, developed a deep sense of the dignity of the individual human being, and had great appreciation for the miracle of life and our existence on this earth. ~ George Lee Butler, #NFDB
1236:The individual will to survive is often seen as just that, an individual thing. In fact, it's sort of a gene we all carry and like a network of computers it all contributes in some way to when it's individually needed. ~ Danny Boyle, #NFDB
1237:The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it’s up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth—the virtues or the malevolence. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1238:We can arrive at a point of view where the preservation of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness or our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1239:Let America symbolize humanity's struggle to conquer nature and master technology. The time has now come for our Government to facilitate the individual's control over his or her future - and of the future of America. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
1240:No Keynesian has ever proposed a measure designed to make the individual more productive; for that would require institutional means for enabling him to acquire ownership of the nonhuman factor of production: capital. ~ Louis O Kelso, #NFDB
1241:Put together all the existing families and you have society. It is as simple as that. Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be reflected in the kind of society that these families create. ~ Virginia Satir, #NFDB
1242:Sometimes people do go wrong. There is no judgment needed. Wrong will take a short time or a long time to make the individual aware that something is wrong, and that is the beginning of that person's awakening. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1243:Yogis know that sex-energy may be conserved and used for the development of the body and mind of the individual, instead of being dissipated in unnatural excesses as is the wont of so many uninformed people. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
1244:Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1245:Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1246:I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1247:It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1248:It is the individual effort that matters; the ability to take one more step; to understand that the pain of finishing is intense, but finite. In comparison to the the pain of quitting... which is unbearable and eternal. ~ Jos N Harris, #NFDB
1249:Most of ideologies are not based on the individual - no matter what they say. There are these peoples' democracies, nationalism - they're all dictatorships. And I think any kind of dictatorship is bad for the individual. ~ Frank Capra, #NFDB
1250:Nothing could persuade him to accept the possibility of compromise with evil at the expense of others, or to abandon his faith in the rule of law, the supremacy of elected Parliaments and the rights of the individual. ~ Martin Gilbert, #NFDB
1251:Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative. ~ Marilyn Hacker, #NFDB
1252:. . . series of events by which the individual ego emerges during the transition from infancy through childhood. This separation can never become final without sever injury to the original sense of wholeness. P. 120 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
1253:Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
1254:According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find `the truth for me`. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1255:A crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1256:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1257:Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1258:I don't necessarily have to like my players and associates but as their leader I must love them. Love is loyalty, love is teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. This is the strength of any organization. ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
1259:It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
1260:Our task is not, therefore, to deny the archetype, but to dissolve the projections, in order to restore their contents to the individual who has involuntarily lost them by projecting them outside himself. ~ Carl Jung, Collected Works 9, #NFDB
1261:Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1262:Recent events lead me to believe the world is like that, too--people are the individual fragments, but we are also part of the whole mirror. We are connected, not only to one another but also to the fabric of the universe. ~ Wendy Mass, #NFDB
1263:The health care provisions are presumably for individuals. And whoever pays for them, whether it's paid by the individual, state, whatever, the value is an individually based value. It has nothing to do with employment. ~ Kenneth Arrow, #NFDB
1264:The most serious Christians have always been well disposed towards me. I myself, an opponent of Christianity - de rigueur, am far from bearing a grudge against the individual for what is the fatality of millennia. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1265:When the concept of human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the Cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest sense. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
1266:Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1267:Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1268:The gods know, happiness is a precious and rare commodity, and indeed it seems that the more intelligent and perceptive the individual, the less happy they generally are. The cost of seeing things as they are, I expect. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1269:The growth of the individual is the indispensable means for the inner growth as distinguished from the outer force and expansion of the collective being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #NFDB
1270:This is not a heroic age,” he told the drone, staring at the fire. “The individual is obsolete. That’s why life is so comfortable for us all. We don’t matter, so we’re safe. No one person can have any real effect anymore. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
1271:We now know enough to fantasize realistically about what the alien would be like, and I think that this then sets up polarities in the collective psyche that previously we have only seen at the level of the individual. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
1272:What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the human race. Education is revelation coming to the individual man, and revelation is education that has come, and is still coming to the human race. ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, #NFDB
1273:All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1274:For a Christian is only a Christian when he unceasingly asks critical questions of the society in which he lives and continuously stresses the necessity for conversion, not only of the individual but also of the world. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1275:I know as well as you do that only the individual has the key to change themselves. It’s buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we’re the only ones who can use it. ~ Lisa Jewell, #NFDB
1276:My general writing preface is to write an outline and then ignore about half of it, both on a micro level with the individual book, and on a macro level with the series as a whole, and that's pretty much what's happened. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
1277:Sitting there I had a vision of the world with nations, systems, economic blocks, hardening and consolidating; a world where it would become increasingly ludicrous even to talk about freedom, or the individual conscience. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1278:The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. ~ Harry Callahan, #NFDB
1279:This is the mark of great ideas: they unify people and they also act to unify the disparate parts of the human being; they speak of a social order that is possible on the basis of an ordering within the individual self. ~ Jacob Needleman, #NFDB
1280:As a species they were therefore probably doomed. And so the only real adaptive strategy, for the individual, was to do one’s best to secure one’s own position. And sometimes that meant a little strategic defection. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1281:A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1282:If the consequences of pretending to know can be so damaging, why do people keep doing it? That’s easy: in most cases, the cost of saying “I don’t know” is higher than the cost of being wrong—at least for the individual. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
1283:I think there are a lot of different things that dreams do for the individual and they're fascinating because it's not totally known what they do, but we have some science that is opening the door to a new world as we speak. ~ Tom DeLonge, #NFDB
1284:The two most important documents affecting the destiny of America are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Both these immortal papers relate primarily to the freedom of the individual. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
1285:VI. LOOKING BACKWARD
How the planters, having lost the war for slavery, sought to begin again where they left off in 1860, mere substituting for the individual ownership of slaves, a new state serfdom of black folk. ~ W E B Du Bois,#NFDB
1286:A psychic experience that has no links with an archetypal theme does not vibrate with sufficient intensity to make it viable or to allow it much impact on the individual or collective psyche-the experience lacks a deeper echo. ~ Luigi Zoja, #NFDB
1287:"Common to both is the materialistic and collectivist goal, and both lack the very thing that expresses and grips the whole man, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the center as the measure of all things." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1288:For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it becomes clear that most people get to know only one corner of their room, a window seat, a strip of floor which they pace up and down. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1289:Islam is not unusual in having a tradition of martyrs. What is unique to Islam is the tradition of murderous martyrdom, in which the individual martyr simultaneously commits suicide and kills others for religious reasons. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
1290:Most of the books that I've written have been focused on, sort of, the individual, and sort of, either a voice, a personal voice, or a kind of transforming event where they step forward to fight for something they value. ~ Caroline Kennedy, #NFDB
1291:National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1292:There are various levels above and below the human through which the individual soul may pass in the course of its reincarnations—the angelic, the titanic, the animal, the purgatories, and the realm of the frustrated ghosts. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1293:The traditional Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was so broadly democratic that it included the right to have no religion at all - it gave to the individual the right to worship any God he chose or no god. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
1294:All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1295:because then the sum of experiences, of suffering, of self-analysis and soul-struggle have mellowed the individual and he can aid because he speaks and moves out of a ripe, conscious wisdom—not through precepts, ideas, formulas. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1296:But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
1297:By doing his share in the associated activity, the individual appropriates the purpose which actuates it, becomes familiar with its methods and subject matters, acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1298:Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
1299:Georg Hegel viewed the "great men" as instruments of something far greater. Hegel believes that an individual can indeed embody the zeitgeist for a moment, but also that the individual isn't always clear they are doing so. ~ Emmanuel Macron, #NFDB
1300:Health is not an objective condition which can be understood by the methods of natural science alone. It is rather a condition related to the mental attitude by which the individual has to value what is essential for his life. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
1301:It just goes to show you that the "R" and the "D" are meaningless - what really matters is whether someone believes in the spirit and unending compassion of the individual, or instead in the destructive power of the collective. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1302:Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1303:The individual who has been liberated by reason is always running head-on into a world, a society, whose past in the shape of 'prejudices' has a great deal of power; he is forced to learn that past reality is also a reality. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1304:A fear is a reaction to a specific danger, to which the individual can make a specific adjustment. But what characterizes anxiety is the feeling of diffuseness and uncertainty and the experience of helplessness toward the threat. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1305:All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1306:in this wonderful human brain of ours there has dawned a realization unknown to the other primates. It is that of the individual, conscious of himself as such, and aware that he, and all that he cares for, will one day die. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1307:It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1308:The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1309:The relationship between the films and the individual Commandments [is] a tentative one. The films should be influenced by the individual Commandments to the same degree that the Commandments influence our daily lives. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski, #NFDB
1310:We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual - in the name of man. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, #NFDB
1311:When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care. ~ Frank Chodorov, #NFDB
1312:Activity proneness in the service of an ideology ... leads the individual into an irreversible series of commitments from which is forged an identity to which the individual inevitably becomes strongly attached psychologically. ~ Edgar Schein, #NFDB
1313:Man not only knows; he knows that he knows. He reflects. But this power of reflection, when restricted to the individual, is only partial and rudimentary. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind, #NFDB
1314:The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
1315:The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1316:All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1317:[Fritz] Perls felt that most psychotherapy, and particularly psychoanalysis, was too intellectual, ignoring the physical sensations of the individual. One of his sayings was that we must "lose our heads to come to our senses". ~ Deldon McNeely, #NFDB
1318:I referred to the innate human need for what psychologist Arie Kruglanski was the first to label “cognitive closure,” which he defined as “the individual’s need for a firm answer to a question and aversion to ambiguity.”[ 3] ~ Harold Schechter, #NFDB
1319:The individual who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense; first, he is guilty against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
1320:"The less we understand of what our [forebears] sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1321:Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art. ...because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1322:All is coordinated in the universe. All things depend mutually on each other. All conspires to one sole end, not only in the individual whose parts are perfectly linked together, but anteriorly and to a higher degree in the universe. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
1323:A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1324:By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
1325:Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny here is the beginning of a cure for that blindness which reigns at the present hour. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1326:In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1327:It is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
1328:My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more it overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1329:[On technology:] A realm of intimate, personal power is developing -- power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1330:Plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain statement of his being. Each is the whole Eternal concealed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #NFDB
1331:Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
1332:When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual, #NFDB
1333:When you take the problems of the world on your shoulders, your body doesn't feel good. It's just that simple. Leave the problems of the world to the individual problem-makers of the world, and you be the joy-seeker that you are. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1334:Among primitives, and wherever the conditions are primitive, the conflict between individual consciousness and the collective tendencies of the unconscious is resolved in favor of the collective and at the cost of the individual. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
1335:Donald Trump is betraying everything that made America great: tolerance, democratic institutions and respect for the individual. In that sense, Trump is the most un-American U.S. president that the country has had in a long time. ~ Martin Schulz, #NFDB
1336:Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1337:For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture. ~ William Irwin Thompson, #NFDB
1338:In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. On the radio show, I suggested, instead, that a deeper meaning was required. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1339:In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1340:In your intercourse with sects, the sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian belief belong to the Church; but the faith of the individual, centred in his heart, is, or may be, collateral to them. Faith is subjective. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
1341:The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1342:For themost of us, if we donot talkof ourselves, orat any rate of the individual circles of which we are the centres, we can talk of nothing. I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1343:Generally, I decided, it was better to wait, if you had any feeling for the individual. If you hated her right off, it was better to fuck her right off; if you didn't, it was better to wait, then fuck her and hate her later on. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1344:My contention is that it is impossible to limit Truth, for that would mean that you were stepping down the Truth to the individual, who is limited. It would be useless to lay down a crystallized method for everyone to follow. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1345:The individual acts only if he experiences a need, i.e., if the equilibrium between the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and action tends to re-establish the equilibrium, i.e., to re-adapt the organism (Claparède). ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
1346:There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1347:If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1348:I'm not interested in the wellbeing of society because society is a big lie. Where is society? I only see individual beings and only the individual can grow. Each one is enormous and tremendous in his own way-each one is unique. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
1349:In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. On the radio show, I suggested, instead, that a deeper meaning was required. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1350:In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already. ~ Elif Safak, #NFDB
1351:One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1352:Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. ~ Dan Chaon, #NFDB
1353:With august gesture the god shows us how there is need for a whole world of torment in order for the individual to produce the redemptive vision and to sit quietly in his rocking rowboat in mid sea, absorbed in contemplation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1354:Appropriating” seems to have the same stress put on it in relating the individual to the world through the ownership of property as “belief has in relating the individual to the world through the acquisition and power of knowledge. ~ Stanley Cavell, #NFDB
1355:Conservatives believe in private property because they respect the autonomy of the individual. But it is fair to say that too many conservatives have failed to take seriously the many abuses to which property is subject. Libertarian ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1356:He forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon, #NFDB
1357:Immortality makes sense only when the individual soul can be thought of as merging into a great collective mush of sainthood. If we take anything with us into the next world, it is not what survives in the memories of our relicts. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1358:The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
1359:The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1360:There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1361:Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity. ~ Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
1362:During a mental multiplication, the pupil normally dilated to a large size within a few seconds and stayed large as long as the individual kept working on the problem; it contracted immediately when she found a solution or gave up. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1363:Humanism believes that the individual attains the good life by harmoniously combining personal satisfactions and continuous self-development with significant work and other activities that contribute to the welfare of the community. ~ Corliss Lamont, #NFDB
1364:Is being single hard? It depends where your mind is. If you are focused, being single is an enjoyable experience, but if you hate being alone, you'll hate being single. I think it depends on the individual are where they are in life. ~ Lauren London, #NFDB
1365:So into this history of the growing pluralism of Western worldviews came the New Age movement whose central thesis is simple: The individual self is the center of reality: The self is the really real. Immanence replaces Transcendence. ~ James W Sire, #NFDB
1366:The individual within the collective is never, or hardly ever, conscious of the prevailing thought style, which almost always exerts an absolutely compulsive force upon his thinking and with which it is not possible to be at variance. ~ Ludwik Fleck, #NFDB
1367:The world pushes people around, not because other people are bullies, but because the individual lacks internal control and discipline. People who lack internal fortitude often become victims of those who have self-discipline. In ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1368:Who can I marry? Where can I live? What kind of career can I achieve? These are just some of the stories breaking with Anthem-like implications. And the ideas crushing the individual are all around us, chipping away at us constantly. ~ Jeff Britting, #NFDB
1369:And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
1370:Everyone can help. We can educate ourselves and our children about other countries and cultures. We have a responsibility to be aware of others and I believe this will inspire the individual way each person can make their difference. ~ Angelina Jolie, #NFDB
1371:I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer. ~ Langston Hughes, #NFDB
1372:I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
1373:In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command. ~ Muhammad Iqbal, #NFDB
1374:It isn't myself that's important in this transaction apparently; the individual doesn't count much in the situation...all of us are more or less pawns. We're moved about like chessmen by circumstances over which we have no control. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
1375:The point of the adversity is to toughen your mind so that you can handle difficult circumstances in life. Your mind, toughen just like you toughen your body. So it really depends on what you need. It really depends on the individual. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1376:Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior. ~ Milton H Erickson, #NFDB
1377:Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is performed by making these grooves appear to the individual as the only possible ones. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
1378:My own personal preference is that the consumer, the individual person should be protected because individual people and the difference between individual people and the diversity we have between people on the planet is so important. ~ Tim Berners Lee, #NFDB
1379:One of the reasons AA works is that the individual makes the decision not to drink, one day at a time. One hour. One minute even. You can do that, right? One minute?...There's one minute. You're stronger than you know, Mrs. Alexander. ~ Tammara Webber, #NFDB
1380:The task of propaganda lies not in a scientific training of the individual, but rather in directing the masses toward certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' field of vision. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1381:But still he must have recourse to the paradox. For when the individual by his guilt has gone outside the universal he can return to it only by virtue of having come as the individual into an absolute relationship with the absolute. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1382:In "Mormonism" the second principle of action for the individual is repentance. If faith in God has been attained and his laws have been made clear, the believer will no longer violate those laws; he will obey them. That is repentance. ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
1383:Life is precarious and improbable, a flame in matter, easily snuffed out. Nature shows no regard for the individual spark, in this creature or that, but only for the spreading of the fire, like an ember passed from cell to cell. ~ Scott Russell Sanders, #NFDB
1384:So, with the Tea Party, for example, there’s no understanding that the entirety of human history is the war between the individual and the group. If I’m not for me, I can’t live a day, but if I’m not for the group, I won’t live long either. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1385:The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
1386:The decision to join or not join a service union, political party or other organization should be left up to the individual. No such organization has the right to take money out of the pockets of state workers without their proper consent. ~ Matt Blunt, #NFDB
1387:The individual protests against the world, but he doesn't get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt, #NFDB
1388:The relation of the ego to the unconscious and of the personal to the transpersonal decides the fate not only of the individual, but of humanity. The theater of this encounter is the human mind. ~ Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, #NFDB
1389:Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1390:We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea. ~ Robert Menzies, #NFDB
1391:[C]ultures in which the individual feels isolated from nature are also cultures wherein men feel squeamish about the sexual relationship, often regarding it as degrading and evil - especially for those dedicated to the life of the spirit. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1392:Humans are distinguished further by the highly effective way in which they have pooled the individual intelligence of single individuals to produce a collective intelligence that greatly outweighs the capability of any single individual. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
1393:In the course of its ontogenetic development, the individual ego consciousness has pass through the same archetypal stages which determined the evolution of consciousness in the life of humanity. ~ Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, #NFDB
1394:[Politics] is the seedbed of social enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual. Name anything bad in man, and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows with abundance. ~ Maxim Gorky, #NFDB
1395:The # Divine incarnates only in the individual -He or It overshadows the group. The supreme responsibility always lies with the individual. At the exact moment, in the most definite manner Destiny acts and speaks though the individual. ~ Dane Rudhyar, #NFDB
1396:The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1397:"The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization–absolute and unconditional–of its own particular law…To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being…he has failed to realize his own life’s meaning." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1398:The truth is, we cannot change other people. “People change” must occur in the heart, and the heart realm exists between God and the individual. We can walk in love toward the person. We can offer encouragement. But we cannot change them. ~ John Herrick, #NFDB
1399:The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1400:Avant-garde theatre, with its distrust of the individual (that bourgeois invention), tends to go beyond [character] and the psychological approach in search of a syntax of types and characters which are "deconstructed and post-individual. ~ Patrice Pavis, #NFDB
1401:However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a pre-eminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, #NFDB
1402:Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1403:My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
1404:Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities. ~ Lauryn Hill, #NFDB
1405:People who put themselves on the line and sacrifice their own safety for the greater good and for others, and anyone in any profession whose concern is the welfare for other people instead of the individual, are inspiring and important. ~ Chris Hemsworth, #NFDB
1406:That un-American institution, the trades union, has developed its un-American principle of curtailing or abolishing the personal freedom of the individual in a new direction, that of seeking, as far as possible, to cripple the World’s Fair. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
1407:Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
1408:All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance. ~ Ralph Ellison, #NFDB
1409:An individualism which has got beyond the stage of hedonism tends to yield to the lure of the grandiose. It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation. ~ Andre Malraux, #NFDB
1410:A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual’s instinct to survive—and nowhere else!—and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
1411:But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy? ~ Harriet Martineau, #NFDB
1412:The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career! ~ Earl Nightingale, #NFDB
1413:The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accomodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
1414:The light in the gallery changed subtly and he whirled and saw someone approaching him from between the exhibit cases. The individual moved with alarming speed, bent low to the floor, but straightening as he or she drew nearer. Unfolding... ~ Laird Barron, #NFDB
1415:Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
1416:Even if the world progresses generally, youth will always begin at the beginning, and the epochs of the world's cultivation will be repeated in the individual. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as reported by Johann Peter Eckermann in Conversations with Goethe, #NFDB
1417:The key to the Toyota Way and what makes Toyota stand out is not any of the individual elements…But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner, not in spurts. ~ Taiichi Ohno, #NFDB
1418:The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
1419:What is important to my work is the individual picture. I photograph stories on assignment, and of course they have to be put together coherently. But what matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling. ~ Steve McCurry, #NFDB
1420:Wherever people defend the rights of the individual, I stand with them above all, over and beyond any wishes relating to how an economy should be managed or how people should govern themselves. This is a very strong commitment on my part. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
1421:alignment is the necessary condition before empowering the individual will empower the whole team. Empowering the individual when there is a relatively low level of alignment worsens the chaos and makes managing the team even more difficult: ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
1422:But after that, the curve flattens out. There’s surprisingly little difference between a candidate with six months of experience and one with six years. The real difference comes from the individual’s dedication, personality, and intelligence. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1423:People’s name can change throughout their lives the same way people do. They believe nicknames provide insight into not just the individual but how other people perceive that person. People become a double prism, instead of a one-way mirror. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
1424:Perhaps at some other time, when there was no war, men might not act this way, hurrying an individual to his death because they were afraid. Everyone was frightened, everyone was willing to sacrifice the individual because of the group fear. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1425:Regarding "thou mayest":
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. ~ John Steinbeck,#NFDB
1426:The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening—one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1427:Wherever the Bible has been consistently applied, it has dramatically changed the civilization and culture of those who have accepted its teaching. No other book has ever so dramatically changed the individual lives and society in general. ~ John F Walvoord, #NFDB
1428:Yoga means union of the individual mind with universal mind, so meditation is considered the essence of yoga. The transformation of the mind and body during meditation is significantly more profound than simply resting with your eyes closed. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1429:Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation: ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1430:Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1431:It was apparent that materialism was in complete control of the economic structure, the final objective of which was for the individual to become part of a system providing an economic security at the expense of the human soul, mind, and body. ~ Manly P Hall, #NFDB
1432:Liberalism is a really old British tradition and it has a completely different attitude towards the individual and the relationship between the individual and the state than the collectivist response of Labour, and particularly Old Labour, does. ~ Nick Clegg, #NFDB
1433:Out of a hundred birds of the same stock perhaps one will be that bird all breeders hope for—a bird of highly individual character, courageous and resourceful. Much depends on the individual bird and especially its character and intelligence. ~ Ben Macintyre, #NFDB
1434:The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group. ~ Lawrence Kohlberg, #NFDB
1435:The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
1436:The way to stand the “long strain on the temper” is to embrace compromise, seek balance, and strive to serve the national interest, which will be, in the fullness of time, in the personal historical interest of the individual president himself. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1437:The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1438:Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1439:It is infinitely more useful for a child to hear a story told by a person than by computer. Because the greatest part of the learning experience lies not in the particular words of the story but in the involvement with the individual reading it. ~ Frank Smith, #NFDB
1440:Nature asserts itself in the face of Spirit which it denies while assuming it; the individual is again found in the collectivity within which he is lost; & each man's death is fulfilled by being cancelled out into the Life of Mankind. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1441:Practical experience soon teaches us that the crux of the matter does not lie in the presence of a parental complex, but rather in the special way in which the complex works itself out in the life of the individual. ~ Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, #NFDB
1442:Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1443:Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1444:...the fight that political philosophers have always identified as the central conflict in human history: that between the individual and society. Thus far, scholars have shown little interest in finding this conflict in American history... ~ Thaddeus Russell, #NFDB
1445:The legal relations between the individual and the community which arise out of the production and distribution of property, comprise by far the greater, and more important, part of the law; subtract these and very little content would be left. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
1446:The moment a person loses the capacity to think, to question, Tanya considers them no longer human but a machine. And that is why the individual Tanya Degurechaff reveres thought, loves debate, and sneers at dogmatism from the bottom of her heart. ~ Carlo Zen, #NFDB
1447:The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
1448:Who are we and were are we going? Why are we, with all our "progress" so limited in understanding and sympathy and the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform? ~ Lily King, #NFDB
1449:All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
1450:At its most basic, the spiritual is the experience of the connectedness that underlies reality. The depth of that experience depends on the capacity of the individual to set aside considerations of self, thereby gaining access to connection. ~ Arthur J Deikman, #NFDB
1451:For Stirner, the social axiom of conservative, liberal, and socialist schools of political thought alike is in itself repressive: it disguises as potentially redemptive an order whose central function is inhibitory of the individual's interests. ~ John Carroll, #NFDB
1452:Freedom is valued in a culture that wants to encourage dissent and to stimulate originality and independence. It belongs to a society which is open to change, and which esteems the agent of change, the individual, above its own peace of mind. ~ Jacob Bronowski, #NFDB
1453:I do a variety of activities like Pilates, bike riding, physical therapy, and running. I also train on the ice five to six days a week. On the ice, I work on my programs as a whole and the individual technical elements that comprise the programs. ~ Sasha Cohen, #NFDB
1454:One underlying philosophy in Ecclesiastes is that the individual can find truth by using his powers of observation and reason instead of blindly following tradition. You acquire wisdom and focus that wisdom to figure out the world on your own. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1455:The hero myth carries the individualism of the West to its logical conclusion, fulfilling the Western spiritual ideal, leading the individual self to its own transformation through the inner encounter with the depths of the psyche and spirit. ~ Keiron Le Grice, #NFDB
1456:The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. ~ Georg Simmel, #NFDB
1457:The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1458:The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual.... For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1459:To have been selected to represent Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individual 400m and the 4x400m relay is a real honor and I am so pleased that years of hard work, determination and sacrifice have all come together. ~ Oscar Pistorius, #NFDB
1460:Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body. ~ Thomas Szasz, #NFDB
1461:Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. (…) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other. ~ Liang Qichao, #NFDB
1462:I have come to feel that the more fully the individual is understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward. ~ Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person, #NFDB
1463:I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
1464:Indeed, the modern arguments about the necessities and virtues of government control over the individual are but malign echoes of utopian prescriptions through the ages, which attempted to define subjugation as the most transcendent state of man. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
1465:In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1466:The best part of the Western tradition has included a recognition of and respect for the individual as a living entity. The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to to support society. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1467:The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, of his ignorance and fear. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1468:The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death. ~ Odd Nerdrum, #NFDB
1469:And a new philosophy emerged called quantum physics, which suggest that the individual’s function is to inform and be informed. You really exist only when you’re in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
1470:Not so long ago people believed in ideologies, systems, and institutions to save all societies. Today, they have given up such hopes and have returned to relying on the individual, on individual freedom, individual initiative, individual creativity. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1471:Nowadays, the process of growth and development almost never seems to manage to create this subtle balance between the importance of the individual parts, and the coherence of the environment as a whole. One or the other always dominates. ~ Christopher Alexander, #NFDB
1472:This sounded the death knell of small family businesses, soon to be followed by the disappearance of the individual entrepreneur, gobbled up one by one by the increasingly hungry ogre of capitalism, and drowned by the rising tide of large companies. ~ mile Zola, #NFDB
1473:whatever the views of Suetonius and other ancient writers, the qualities and characters of the individual emperors did not matter very much to most inhabitants of the empire, or to the essential structure of Roman history and its major developments. ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
1474:Whenever conscious life becomes one-sided or adopts a false attitude, [archetypal] images "instinctively" rise to the surface in dreams and in the visions of artists and seers to restore the psychic balance, whether of the individual or of the epoch. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1475:But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1476:Charity is reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need. Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's fellow man hardly qualifies as charity. When done privately, we deem it theft, and the individual risks jail time. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
1477:. . . it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation. No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. P. 38 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
1478:Man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1479:Worst of all, we might miss the real opportunities for a thoughtful, other-regarding reconciliation of two critical parts of our human nature: the desire to liberate and enable the individual, and the impetus to protect and serve the collective. ~ Cass R Sunstein, #NFDB
1480:And what's interesting, and I don't think a lot of Americans understand this fact, is that, one, most new jobs are created by small businesses; two, most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax, or many small businesses pay tax there. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1481:Evolution runs in the direction of enhanced genetic autonomy, or in other words, enhanced individuality—not referring to the individual organism but to the dynamic process in which generations follow after generations. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
1482:"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The creative process is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual." ~ Carl Rogers, #NFDB
1483:If I could nominate one candidate for “biggest obstacle to world peace and social harmony,” it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1484:Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. ~ Friedrich A Hayek, #NFDB
1485:Now he learned what law and order and truth are, what consent and harmony mean; how the individual may find his own end in a higher end, where law and freedom mean the same thing, and the purest certainty exists without the slightest constraint. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1486:The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game; for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1487:The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.
On the dragon there are many scales. Every one of them says "Thou Shalt."
Kill the dragon "Thou Shalt."
When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
1488:The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. ~ Albert Gallatin, #NFDB
1489:The # zodiac sign on the # Ascendant normally tells us much concerning the dharma of the individual - that is, the central potentiality which the person should seek consciously to actualize as a vessel or lens through which the Divine may act. ~ Dane Rudhyar, #NFDB
1490:Through the eclipse of large areas of the self, by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of himself; he feels, if he does not actually become, like a shadow without weight and substance. ~ Karen Horney, #NFDB
1491:To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
1492:While new rights are attributed to or indeed almost presumed by the individual, life is not always protected as the primary value and the primordial right of every human being. The ultimate aim of medicine remains the defence and promotion of life. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1493:Without a criterion enabling us to distinguish genuine human rights from the many impostors we will never be sure that our legal provisions, however wise, benevolent and responsible, will be secure against the individual desire to escape from them. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1494:And the rule in life that has unprecedented power is that the individual who knows the right people, for the right reasons, and utilizes the power of these relationships, can become a member of the “club,” whether he started out as a caddie or not. ~ Keith Ferrazzi, #NFDB
1495:Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1496:from the head honcho to the person who scraped shit from the toilets. He always saw the individual person rather than the job. There were only two types of people that mattered for Tom. Good guys and wanks. That was the only measure he took of anyone. ~ Mark Wilson, #NFDB
1497:If this is what happens, then a transference and displacement of the psychical intensity of the individual elements has taken place; as a consequence, the difference between the texts of the dream-content and the dream-thoughts makes its appearance. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1498:In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1499:It was a place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break his spirit, so that he accepts that he is No. 6 and will live there happily as No. 6 for ever after. And this is the one rebel that they can't break. ~ Patrick McGoohan, #NFDB
1500:Society is just a structure with no soul. The soul is of the individual. One individual outweighs all societies. And, one individual's revolution outweighs all revolutions in the whole of history, because one man can become the womb for God to be reborn. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
498 Integral Yoga
70 Occultism
68 Christianity
66 Philosophy
53 Psychology
36 Yoga
21 Science
12 Poetry
11 Integral Theory
9 Education
6 Cybernetics
4 Theosophy
4 Hinduism
4 Fiction
3 Sufism
3 Mythology
2 Buddhism
1 Thelema
381 Sri Aurobindo
244 The Mother
132 Nolini Kanta Gupta
119 Satprem
52 Carl Jung
33 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
30 Plotinus
23 Swami Krishnananda
20 A B Purani
19 Aleister Crowley
19 Aldous Huxley
11 Rudolf Steiner
10 Franz Bardon
9 Sri Ramakrishna
9 Plato
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Paul Richard
6 Norbert Wiener
6 Jordan Peterson
6 James George Frazer
5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
5 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 William Wordsworth
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Jorge Luis Borges
3 Joseph Campbell
3 H P Lovecraft
3 George Van Vrekhem
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Vyasa
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jean Gebser
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 Bokar Rinpoche
2 Alice Bailey
109 The Synthesis Of Yoga
47 The Life Divine
33 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
31 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
30 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
25 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
24 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
23 The Study and Practice of Yoga
23 Essays On The Gita
21 The Human Cycle
20 Record of Yoga
20 Questions And Answers 1956
20 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
19 The Perennial Philosophy
18 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
16 The Practice of Psycho therapy
16 Letters On Yoga IV
16 Letters On Yoga II
15 The Future of Man
15 Mysterium Coniunctionis
15 Agenda Vol 09
14 Prayers And Meditations
13 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
13 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
13 Letters On Yoga III
13 Letters On Yoga I
13 Isha Upanishad
12 Talks
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
12 Agenda Vol 03
11 Agenda Vol 05
11 Agenda Vol 01
10 The Phenomenon of Man
10 Questions And Answers 1955
10 Magick Without Tears
10 Essays Divine And Human
9 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
9 Questions And Answers 1953
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
9 Liber ABA
9 Agenda Vol 04
9 Agenda Vol 02
8 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
8 Aion
8 Agenda Vol 13
8 Agenda Vol 10
7 Questions And Answers 1954
7 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
7 On Education
7 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
7 Agenda Vol 08
7 Agenda Vol 07
6 The Practice of Magical Evocation
6 The Golden Bough
6 Some Answers From The Mother
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Let Me Explain
6 Cybernetics
6 Agenda Vol 11
5 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
5 The Integral Yoga
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
5 City of God
4 Wordsworth - Poems
4 Words Of The Mother II
4 Words Of Long Ago
4 Twilight of the Idols
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 Labyrinths
4 Initiation Into Hermetics
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Lovecraft - Poems
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
3 Agenda Vol 12
2 Words Of The Mother III
2 Words Of The Mother I
2 Walden
2 Vishnu Purana
2 Theosophy
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Raja-Yoga
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Kena and Other Upanishads
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 God Exists
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For it must be understood that the heart, the mystic heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heartantarhdaya of the Upanishadwhich is the centre of the Individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed the human vehicle. That is the source, the fount and origin, the very substance of the true personality. Mystic knowledge the true mystic knowledge which saves and fulfilsbegins with the awakening or the entrance into this real being. This being is pure and luminous and blissful and sovereignly real, because it is a portion, a spark of the Divine Consciousness and Nature: a contact and communion with it brings automatically into play the light and the truth that are its substance. At the same time it is an uprising flame that reaches out naturally to higher domains of consciousness and manifests them through its translucid dynamism.
The knowledge that is obtained without the heart's instrumentation or co-operation is liable to be what the Gita describes as Asuric. First of all, from the point of view of knowledge itself, it would be, as I have already said, egocentric, a product and agent of one's limited and isolated self, easily put at the service of desire and passion. This knowledge, whether rationalistic or occult, is, as it were, hard and dry in its constitution, and oftener than not, negative and destructivewi thering and blasting in its career like the desert simoom.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus there is a great diversity of symbols. At the one end is the mere metaphor or simile or allegory ('figure', as we have called it) and at the other end is the symbol identical with the thing symbolized. And upon this inner character of the symbol depends also to a large extent its range and scope. There are symbols which are universal and intimately ingrained in the human consciousness itself. Mankind has used them in all ages and climes almost in the same sense and significance. There are others that are limited to peoples and ages. They are made out of forms that are of local and temporal interest and importance. Their significances vary according to time and place. Finally, there are symbols which are true of the Individual consciousness only; they depend on personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, on one's environment and upbringing and education.
Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad calls jgrat) is the milieu in which his soul-experiences naturally manifest and find their play. It is the forms and movements of that consciousness which clo the and give a concrete habitation and name to perceptions on the subtler ranges of the inner existence. If the experiences on these planes are to be presented to the conscious memory and to the brain-mind and made communicable to others through speech, this is the inevitable and natural process. Symbols are a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nachiketas is the young aspiring human being still in the Ignorancenaciketa, meaning one without consciousness or knowledge. The three boons he asks for are in reference to the three fundamental modes of being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the Individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental.
The first boon regards the Individual, that is to say, the Individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the Individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the Individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the Individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the Individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the Individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold manner.
The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the gospel of immortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple immortality. And who else can be the best teacher of immortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first immortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the Individual name and formthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second immortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit for ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final immortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
Rig Veda, X. 14-11, 12.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In love the Individuality is slain; who loves not love?
Love death therefore, and long eagerly for it.
--
The blood is the life of the Individual: offer then
blood!
--
of the Rosy Cross, the giving-up of the Individuality,
as has been explained as nauseam in previous chapters.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the Individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the Individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
These sittings, in fact, furnished Sri Aurobindo with an occasion to admit and feel the outer atmosphere and that of the group living with him. It brought to him the much-needed direct contact of the mental and vital make-up of the disciples, enabling him to act on the atmosphere in general and on the Individual in particular. He could thus help to remould their mental make-up by removing the limitations of their minds and opinions, and correct temperamental tendencies and formations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere amenable to the working of the Higher Consciousness. Far more important than the actual talk and its content was the personal contact, the influence of the Master, and the divine atmosphere he emanated; for through his outer personality it was the Divine Consciousness that he allowed to act. All along behind the outer manifestation that appeared human, there was the influence and presence of the Divine.
What was talked in the small group informally was not intended by Sri Aurobindo to be the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the Individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was to point out to the disciple the inherent incapacity of the human intellect and its secondary place in the search for the ultimate Reality.
But there were occasions when he did give his independent, personal views on some problems, on events or other subjects. Even then it was never an authoritarian pronouncement. Most often it appeared to be a logically worked out and almost inevitable conclusion expressed quite impersonally though with firm and sincere conviction. This impersonality was such a prominent trait of his personality! Even in such matters as dispatching a letter or a telegram it would not be a command from him to a disciple to carry out the task. Most often during his usual passage to the dining room he would stop on the way, drop in on the company of four or five disciples and, holding out the letter or the telegram, would say in the most amiable and yet the most impersonal way: "I suppose this has to be sent." And it would be for someone in the group instantly to volunteer and take it. The expression he very often used was "It was done" or "It happened", not "I did."
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Consecration is the wire that connects the Individual battery to
the infinite reserve of forces.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the Individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being nor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the Individual, so the right relation of the Individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities.
It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
He can subordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature's other instincts, the reproduction of the Individual and the conservation of the type in the family, class or community. Self, domesticity, the accustomed order of the society and of the nation are the constituents of the material existence. Its immense importance in the economy of Nature is self-evident, and commensurate is the importance of the human type which represents it. He assures her of the safety of the framework she has made and of the orderly continuance and conservation of her past gains.
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
--
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the Individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the Individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.
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But the spiritual life, like the mental, may thus make use of this outward existence for the benefit of the Individual with a perfect indifference to any collective uplifting of the merely symbolic world which it uses. Since the Eternal is for ever the same in all things and all things the same to the Eternal, since the exact mode of action and the result are of no importance compared with the working out in oneself of the one great realisation, this spiritual indifference accepts no matter what environment, no matter what action, dispassionately, prepared to retire as soon as its own supreme end is realised. It is so that many have understood the ideal of the Gita. Or else the inner love and bliss may pour itself out on the world in good deeds, in service, in compassion, the inner Truth in the giving of knowledge, without therefore attempting the transformation of a world which must by its inalienable nature remain a battlefield of the dualities, of sin and virtue, of truth and error, of joy and suffering.
But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of worldexistence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in humanity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive development of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
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The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the Individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
We have to recognise once more that the Individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.
Therefore from a concrete view of human life in its threefold potentialities we come to the same conclusion that we had drawn from an observation of Nature in her general workings and the three steps of her evolution. And we begin to perceive a complete aim for our synthesis of Yoga.
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But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the Individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet it is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the Individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the Individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the Individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and working through her formations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort, - God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal
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and the Individual. If the Individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the Individual ascension.
It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the Individual and sought after by him, so also the Individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the
Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the Individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the Individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the Individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
For the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of
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For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the Individual soul and the transcendent and universal
Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth,
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Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the Individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in every body and yet transcends all form and name.
Hathayoga aims at the conquest of the life and the body whose combination in the food sheath and the vital vehicle constitutes, as we have seen, the gross body and whose equilibrium is the foundation of all Nature's workings in the human being. The equilibrium established by Nature is sufficient for the normal egoistic life; it is insufficient for the purpose of the Hathayogin.
For it is calculated on the amount of vital or dynamic force necessary to drive the physical engine during the normal span of human life and to perform more or less adequately the various workings demanded of it by the Individual life inhabiting this frame and the world-environment by which it is conditioned.
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Nature the equilibrium is based upon the Individualisation of a limited quantity and force of the Prana; more than that the Individual is by personal and hereditary habit unable to bear, use or control. In Hathayoga, the equilibrium opens a door to the universalisation of the Individual vitality by admitting into the body, containing, using and controlling a much less fixed and limited action of the universal energy.
The chief processes of Hathayoga are asana and pran.ayama.
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By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the Individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
The Systems of Yoga
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Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the Individual soul in the Supreme.
But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect
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But, here too, the exclusive result is not inevitable. The Yoga itself provides a first corrective by not confining the play of divine love to the relation between the supreme Soul and the Individual, but extending it to a common feeling and mutual worship between the devotees themselves united in the same realisation of the supreme Love and Bliss. It provides a yet more general corrective in the realisation of the divine object of Love in all beings not only human but animal, easily extended to all forms whatsoever. We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of
Devotion may be so used as to lead to the elevation of the whole range of human emotion, sensation and aesthetic perception to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards love and joy in our humanity.
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purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the Individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy.
To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the Individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but
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Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the Individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by
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Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the Individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujya-mukti, by which it can become free2 even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of
Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the Individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the
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Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the Individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.
The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the Individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect
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0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
expression. By the psychic change one passes from the Individual
Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent.
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In the soul the Individual and the Divine are eternally one;
therefore, to find one's soul is to find God; to identify with one's
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In the Individual evolution, one must develop in oneself
a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An organ in the human being has been especially developed to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic process the self-consciousness which I referred to as being the distinctive characteristic of man is a function of this organ. It is his soul, his psychic being; originally it is the spark of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in man it has attained sufficient growth and power and has come so far to the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of one's essential selfjivtman that is above, an eternal portion of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller' (bhart, antarymin) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the Individual are built up and organised.
The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a word, its divinisation.
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the Individual soul. When the Individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. the Individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the Individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
Not to do what others do, but what your soul impels you to do. Not to be others but your own self. Not to be anything but the very cosmic and infinite divinity of your soul. Therein lies your highest freedom and perfect delight. And there you are supremely creative. Each soul has a consortPrakriti, Naturewhich it creates out of its own rib. And in this field of infinite creativity the soul lives, moves and has its being.
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Matter. Our object is not to remove all "limitations" on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfilment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to "do as we like", or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental Yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our Yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the Individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose.
This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. For apart from the Individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, the instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is comparatively easy and natural in the language of the gods (devabhasha) would mean a tour de force, if not altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are suffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears.
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the Individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All movementswhe ther of thought or of life, whether in the Individual or in the massproceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited first; all other thingsall thoughts and feelings and activities are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that formulates, this unknown power that fashions.
Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the Individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. the Individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service for the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achievement, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the Individual was to sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. Here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neither the occasion nor the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object for the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination for the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. the Individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the Individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. the Individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the Individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the Individual fights against the Individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the Individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet sacrifice his ego, that the soul of man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ignoring the fact and denying the truth to say that man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the Individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of forces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. Struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular form at a particular stage, a temporary manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the demand of the Individual soul to unite with the Individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. the Individual is not so self-centred as the Individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil for him, nor coerce and exploit him for its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson for us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the Individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism demands that the Individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should work for the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the Individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.
Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. the Individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. the Individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. the Individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the Individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
Communism takes man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the Individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
A commune is a group of individuals having a common self and a common life-intuition. A common self presupposes the realisation by each individual of his deepest being the self which is at once distinct from and instinct with other selves; a common life-intuition presupposes the awakening of each individual to his inmost creative urge, which, pure and true and vast as it is, fulfils itself in and through other creative urges.
--
the Individual must find himself and establish his secret god-head, and then only, when such free and integral individualities meet and reciprocate and coalesce, can the community they form have a living reality and a permanent potency. On the other hand, unless individuals come together and through the interchange of each other's soul and substance' enhance the communal Godhead, the separate individual godheads also will not manifest in their supreme and sovereign powers.
If society, that is to say, community, be the fieldkshetra for the Individual to live, move and have its being, then we must begin at the very outset with the community itself, at least, with a nucleus that will go to form such a thing. The fear that the untimely grouping together of immature souls may crush out individuality and dig its own grave has, no doubt, sufficient justification behind it to deter one from the attempt; but neither can we be certain that souls nursed and nourished in solitary cells, absolutely apart from any mellowing and broadening influence of the outside world will ever reach to that stage of perfect maturity when they will suddenly and spontaneously break open their cells and recognise in one another the communal brother-self.
As a matter of fact, the Individual is not and cannot be such an isolated thing as our egoistic sense would like to have it. The sharp angularities of the Individual are being, at every moment, chastened by the very primary conditions of life; and to fail to recognise this is the blindest form of ignorance. It is no easy task to draw exactly the line of distinction between our individual being and our social or communal being. In actual life they are so blended together that in trying to extricate them from each other, we but tear and lacerate them both. The highest wisdom is to take the two together as they are, and by a gradual purifying processboth internal and external, internal in thought and knowledge and will, external in life and actionrestore them to their respective truth and lawSatyam and Ritam.
the Individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. the Individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
So first the Individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the Individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. the Individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
Now how to escape the dilemma? Only if we take the commune and the Individual togetheren bloc, as has already been suggested. This means that the commune should be at the beginning a subtle and supple thing, without form and even without name, it should be no more than the circumambient aura the sukshma deha that plays around a group of individuals who meet and unite and move together by a secret affinity, along a common path towards a common goal. As each individual develops and defines himself, the commune also takes a more and more concrete shape; and when at the last stage the Individual rises to the full height of his godhead, takes possession of his integral divinity, the commune also establishes its solid empire, vivid and vibrant in form and name.
***
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the Individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the Individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the Individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the Individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the Individual and within the Individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order. This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the substance and form too of the Highest.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if one rises above the Individual mentality and enters
into the consciousness of Unity, then one can understand.
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governs the development of the Individual, but the most developed individualities are not necessarily those in whom the ego is
strongest - on the contrary. As the Individuality perfects itself,
the power of the ego diminishes, and indeed it is by perfecting
himself that the Individual arrives at that state of divinisation
which liberates him from the ego.
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environment depends upon the value of the Individual,
the two works should proceed side by side. But this
--
Every group, if it is a real one - that is, one made up according to the ability of the Individuals who compose it - must
necessarily be hierarchical.
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on the idea of good and evil, a moral entity or rather an element of goodwill which tries to keep the Individual on what is
commonly known as the straight path.
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the Individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the Individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the Prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. For, although it is permissible to the Individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some human beings are meant eternally for this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and priority of excellence).
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the Individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing moreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, human aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old world conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of a new world envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
--
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. the Individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Jivatman is the Individual Purusha, and the
physical Purusha, the vital Purusha, the mental Purusha
--
In the evolution, the Individual is far ahead of the earth, but
as long as he lives on earth there is a certain interdependence.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the viewpoint of the inner nature, the Individual is more receptive on his birthday from year to year, and thus it is an opportune moment to help him to make some new progress each year.
Blessings.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The ego was necessary to form the Individual being. Its destruction is therefore difficult. There is a much better, though more
difficult solution: to transform it and make it an instrument of
--
The psychic being is the Individual sheath of the Divine Presence.
It is found deep within oneself, beyond all thoughts.
--
and the Individual.
The first condition is to have a physical nature that gives
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What I call a descent is the Individual movement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is manifesting in an old worldas when similarly the mind spread over the earth I call it a manifestation.
You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other.
What I call a descent takes place in the Individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of ascent (there is no ascent really, there is no high or low, no direction: its all a manner of speaking)we speak of ascent when we feel ourselves rising up towards something, and we call it a descent when, after having caught this thing, we bring it down into ourselves.
But when the doors are opened and the flood pours in, it can no longer be called a descent: it is a Force that spreads everywhere. Understood? Ah!
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This means that before hoping to realize such a gnostic collectivity, each one must first of all become (or at least start to become) a gnostic being. It is obvious that the Individual work must take the lead and the collective work follow; but the fact remains that spontaneously, without any arbitrary intervention of will the Individual progress IS restrained or CHECKED, as It were, by the collective state. Between the collectivity and the Individual, there exists an interdependence from which one cannot be totally free, even if one tries. And even he who might try, in his yoga, to free himself totally from the human and terrestrial state of consciousness, would be at least subconsciously bound by the state of the whole, which impedes and PULLS BACKWARDS. One can attempt to go much faster, one can attempt to let all the weight of attachments and responsibilities fall off, but in spite of everything, the realization of even the most advanced or the leader in the march of evolution is dependent upon the realization of the whole, dependent upon the state in which the terrestrial collectivity happens to be. And this PULLS backwards to such an extent that sometimes one has to wait centuries for the earth to be ready before being able to realize what is to be realized.
This is why Sri Aurobindo has also written somewhere else that a double movement is necessary: the effort for individual progress and realization must be combined with the effort of trying to uplift the whole so as to enable it to make a progress indispensable for the greater progress of the Individual: a mass progress, if you will, that allows the Individual to take a further step forward.
And now you understand why I had thought it would be useful to have a few meditations in common, to work at creating a common atmosphere a bit more organized than my big hotel of last night!
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Individually, at each moment and in each circumstance, the vision of the truth of the moment, of the circumstance, of the Individual.
In the external consciousness, the impersonal and mechanical recording of what is happening and of what are the people and things that comprise both the field of action and the limitations imposed upon this action. The recording is innately automatic and mechanical, without any kind of evaluation, as objective as possible.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness went there and consciously remained there between two and three oclock in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the Individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on this side that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.
I found myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Each element, let us say each individual element (even though it is not exactly like that), is in its place according to whether the Grace acts on the Individual or on the collectivity.
When the Grace acts on the collectivity, each thing, each element, each principle, is put in its place as the result of a karmic logic in the universal movement. This is what gives us the impression of disorder and confusion as we see it.
When the Grace acts on the Individual, it gives to each the maximum position according to what he is and what he has realized.
And then, there is a super-grace, as it were, which works in a few exceptional cases, which places you not according to what you are but according to what you are to become, which means that the universal cosmic position is ahead of the Individuals progress.
And it is then that you should keep silent and fall on your knees.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Naturally, the reception is always incomplete or partially modified; when it passes through the Individuality, it becomes narrowed, a personal thing. It seems impossible for each one to have a consciousness vast enough to see the thing in its entirety.
You said that our way of receiving your work or becoming conscious of it does not exclusively depend upon us. What do you mean?
--
There is an interdependence between the Individual progress and the collective progress, between that which works and that which is worked upon. It proceeds like this (gesture of intermeshing), and as one progresses, the other progresses. The progress above not only hastens the progress below but brings the two nearer together, thus changing the distance in the relationship; that is, the distance will not remain the same, the ratio between the progress here and the progress above wont always be identical.
The progress above follows a certain trajectory, and in some cases the distance increases, in others it decreases (although on the whole, the distance remains relatively unchanged), but my feeling is that the collective receptivity will increase as the action becomes increasingly supramentalized. And the need for an individual receptivitywith all its distortions and alterations and limitationswill decrease in importance as the supramental influence increasingly imposes its power. This influence will impose itself in such a way that it will no longer be subject to the defects in receptivity.
0 1958-11-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
All this together constitutes one collective entity, and the Individual is lost in it. If I had to deal with this person or that person individually, it would be different. But all together, taking them all together as a collective entity, well, its not brilliant.
Mother is referring to the Ashram as a collectivity.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I could have begun this work on the body thirty years ago, but I was constantly caught up in this harassing ashram life. It took this illness2 to enable me truly to begin doing the sadhana of the body. It does not mean that thirty years were wasted, for it is likely that had I been able to start this work thirty years ago, it would have been premature. The consciousness of the others also had to develop the two are linked, the Individual progress and the collective progress, and one cannot advance if the other does not advance.
I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I went back to bed, the transitional period lasted 45 minutes. During this time, I tried to locate the role of the Individual consciousness on earth. In a flash, I understood its purpose. For you see, as long as the experience lasted, I did not feel any necessity at all of an individuality for this supreme flood to manifest. Then I understood, precisely, that the Individuality served to put into contact, in this flood, all that reached out towards what is called Ithis individualized representation of the Divinein order to receive help and support from it, and to be put into contact. I did not say put into contact WITH this flood but put into contact IN this flood, for it was not happening outsidenothing was outside this flood, nothing exists outside it.
And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
How strange it is! You have the feeling of ascending, of a progress in consciousness, and everything, all the events and circumstances of life follow one another with an unquestioning logic. You see the Divine Will unfolding with a wonderful logic. Then, from time to time, there appears a little set of circumstances (either isolated or repeated), which are like snags on the way; you cant explain them, so you put them aside for later on. Some such accidents have been quite significant, but they dont seem to follow this ascending line of the present individuality. Theyre scattered along the way, sometimes repeated, sometimes only once, and then they vanish. And when you go through such an experience, you sense that they are things put aside for later on. And then, all of a sudden (especially during these last two years when I have again descended to take all that up), all of a sudden, one after another, all these snags return. And they dont follow the same curve; rather, its as if suddenly you reach a certain state and a certain impersonal breadth that far surpasses the Individual, and this new state enters into contact with one of those old accidents that had remained in the deepest part of the subconscientand that makes it rise up again, the two meet in an explosion of light. Everything is explained, everything is understood, everything is clear! No explanation is needed: it has become OBVIOUS.
This is entirely another way of understandingits not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a revelation. Its the meeting of this subconscious notationthis something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing and from it springs forth a lightoh, a resplendence of light!like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.
--
These things are like landmarks along the ascending path: you go forward step by step, and sometimes its painful, sometimes joyful, or with a certain amount of toil that bears witness still to the presence of the personality or the Individuality and its limitations (the Questions and Answers are full of this)but the other thing is different, completely different: the other thing is an overflowing joy, and not only the joy of knowing but the joy of BEING. An overflowing joy.2
There, my child.
--
I know I told you that I had had a vision, but you didnt understand what I told you that day. It was a vision of the place you occupy in my being and of the work we have to do together. Thats really how it is. These things [that I tell you] have their utility and a concrete life, and I see them as very powerful for world transformation theyre what I call experiences (which is much more than an experience because it extends far beyond the Individual)and its the same whether its said or not said: the Action is done. But the fact that it is said, that it is formulated here and preserved, is exclusively for you, because you were made for this and this is why we met.
It doesnt need a lot of explaining.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its quite odd, for this was not a personal consciousness, it was not someone remembering his lifethis is what I found most interesting; what came were pieces, little chunks of lifes construction, a collection of people and circumstances. And it is impossible to separate the Individual from all that is around him, its clear! It all holds together like (if you change one thing, everything is changed) it holds together like an agglomerated mass.
I had seen this earlier from another angle. In the beginning, when I started having the consciousness of immortality and when I brought together this true consciousness of immortality and the human conception of it (which is entirely different), I saw so clearly that when a human (even quite an ordinary human, one who is not a collectivity in himselfas is a writer, for example, or a philosopher or statesman) projects himself through his imagination into what he calls immortality (meaning an indefinite duration of time) he doesnt project himself alone but rather, inevitably and always, what is projected along with himself is a whole agglomeration, a collectivity or totality of things which represent the life and the consciousness of his present existence. And then I made the following experiment on a number of people; I said to them, Excuse me, but lets say that through a special discipline or a special grace your life were to continue indefinitely. What you would most likely extend into this indefinite future are the circumstances of your life, this formation you have built around yourself that is made up of people, relationships, activities, a whole collection of more or less living or inert things.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything. Whatever manifests in this Heart can manifest in all things. This is the great secret, the secret of divine incarnation in an individual form. For in the normal course of things, what manifests at the center is only realized in the outer form with the awakening and RESPONSE Of the will within the Individual form. But if the central Will is constantly, permanently represented in one individual, he can then serve as an intermediary between that Will and all beings, and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent way. This is the reason for these descents of what could be called polarized consciousnesses that always come to earth for a particular realization, with a definite purpose and missiona mission decided upon before the actual embodiment. These mark the great stages of the supreme incarnations upon earth.
And when the day comes for the manifestation of supreme Lovea crystalized, concentrated descent of supreme Love that will truly be the hour of Transformation, for nothing will be able to resist That.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, personal surrender and devotion is an excellent solution for the Individual, but it doesnt work for the collectivity. For example, as soon as I am alone and lying on my bedpeace! (Ah, I forgot! They had invented yet another thing: making my heartbeats irregular. Every three or four beats it would stop; then it would start up again, pounding as if I had been struck. Three, four beats, a faint little beat, then stop then, bang! Blow after blow. One more of their extraordinary inventions!) But, as soon as I stretch out and make a total surrender of all the cellsno more activity, nothingeverything goes well. But I am well aware that this surrender has an effect on the action only to the extent that the Supreme Lord has decided upon the action, and those movements stretch over long periods of time5: all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terrestrial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale. These forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, many things can happen.
Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution its a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true comm and here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
--
Later, on the 27th, Mother remarked: 'I was reading about this very thing yesterday in The Secret of the Veda, in the first hymn translated by Sri Aurobindo (the reference is to the colloquy between Indra and Agastya, Rig Veda I.170cf. The Secret of the Veda, Cent. Ed., X.241 ff.), and it helped me put my finger on the problem. In this hymn there is a dispute between Indra and the Rishi because the Rishi wants to progress too quickly without first passing through Indra [the god of the Mind], and Indra stops him; finally they reach an agreement. Sri Aurobindo's commentary is quite interesting: when one has the Individual power to go directly, but neglects the steps which are still necessary for the whole, for the universal movement, then one is stopped short. That is absolutely my experience.'
***
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Three years earlier, in 1958, Mother had told Satprem that February and March were 'bad months,' and she had spoken of cyclical movements in Nature like those in the Individual consciousness, with alternating periods of difficulty and progress.
Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mother (and formerly Sri Aurobindo as well) to receive her look.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Listen, mon petit, you dont need to ask, I will tell you right away. Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere that the movement of world transformation is double: first, the Individual who does sadhana6 and establishes contact with higher things; but at the same time, the world is a base and it must rise up a little and prepare itself for the realization to be achieved (this is putting it simply). Some people live merely on the surface they come alive only when they stir about restlessly. Whatever happens inside them (if anything does!) is immediately thrown out into movement. Such people always need an outer activity; take J. for example: he fastened onto Sri Aurobindos phrase, World Union, and came to tell me he wanted.
He has been like that since the beginning (gesture expressing agitation), and he had a go at a considerable number of things but none ever succeeded! He has no method, no sense of order and he doesnt know how to organize work. So World Union is simply to let him have his way, like letting a horse gallop.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I suppose this will be the first effect of the Supermindperhaps even its first effect in the Individual, because it will begin in individuals first.
This state of consciousness4 probably has to become constant, but that would pose a problem: how could one then keep in contact with the world as it is in its deformation? Because I have noticed that when this state is very strong in me, very strong, so strong that it can withstand everything bombarding it from outside, people dont understand a thing I say, NOTHING! Therefore, it would seem to cut off a useful contact.
--
It would all require the utmost perfection in the Individuals organizing such a thing.
(long silence)
--
There are stories like this, you know, about people who lived in an ideal solitude, and its not at all impossible to imagine. When one is in contact with this Power, when it is within you, you can see that such things are childs play! It even reaches the point where there is the possibility of changing certain things, of influencing vibrations and forms in the surrounding environment by contagion, so that automatically they begin to be supramentalized. All that is possible but confined to the Individual scale. While if we take the example of what is happening here, where the Individual remains right in the midst of all this chaos. Thats the difficulty! Doesnt this very fact make a certain perfection in realization impossible to attain? But the other case, the Individual isolated in the forest, is always the same thingan example giving no proof that the rest will be able to follow; while whats happening here should already have a much broader radiating influence. At some point this has to happenit MUST happen. But the problem still remains: can it happen simultaneously with or even before the supramentalization of the single individual?
(silence)
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (its not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the Individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the Individual terrestrial atmosphere.
Lets take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first theres a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with SatyavanSatyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, HERE is where I will do my work. Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges that is, a half or quarter-consciousness. There are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, there is an individual working that awakens the Individual inconscient to an individual semiconsciousness, and here, of course, the Individual has controlalthough its not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isnt individualized; what we call an animals behavior doesnt arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the Individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformationto bring Light into the different layers of life, for instanceone descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the wholenot through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.
No, what I mean is that as we progress, we automatically become universalized.
--
Then why have those who had realizations in the past, who found the true Self, all said it meant the dissolution of the Individual, that no personality remained?
Not all! only those who went off into Non-existence said this.
--
I.e., they are cast aside or eliminated from the Individual Subconscient.
'That' seems to refer to physical immortality.
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know that at a certain moment I was making the distinction between the two states, between the person the Individual, personal beingturning towards the Lord, imploring Him to reveal His Will, and then this experience of becomingby extending oneself, by opening, by enlarging, by merging into the creationof BECOMING the Will of the Lord, the Supremes Will. No longer any need to implore Him, to know His Will and receive it like something foreign to youyou become that Will.
The experience was there at that moment, and it was eloquent enough.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All is reconciled. The Rishi is the son of two mothers: son of Aditi, the luminous cow, Mother of infinite Light, creatrix of the worlds; and son as well of Diti, the black cow, Mother of the tenebrous infinite and divided existence for when Diti at last reaches the end of her apparent Night, she gives us divine birth and the milk of heaven. All is fulfilled, The Rishi sets flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine (IX.70.3), he has realized the universal in the Individual, become the Infinite in the finite: Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of these gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee (V.66.2). Far from spurning the earth, he prays: O Godhead, guard for us the Infinite and lavish the finite(IV.2.11).
The voyage draws to its close. Agni has recovered its solar totality, its two concealed extremities. The inviolable work is fulfilled. For Agni is the place where high meets lowand in truth, there is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everywhere: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below (III.22.3). O Fire O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar (I.59.1). O Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality thou createst divine bliss and human joy (I.31.7). For the worlds heart is Joy, Joy dwells in the depths of all things, the well of honey covered by the rock (II.24.4).
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That, more than anything else, may be why I needed a bit of solitude: to reactivate that part of the psychic being which was the Individual intermediary between true Consciousness and the body-consciousness: the part which had lived THAT, was aware of THAT, knew THATknew that wondrous miracle.
(silence)
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is all from the terrestrial, not the Individual standpoint (for the Individual standpoint, its quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness andeven worseall the ill will in the earths consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Individual consciousness came back, just the sense of a limitation, limitation of pain; without that, no individual.2
And we set off again on the way, certain of the Victory.
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then began the process of descent,1 and the Voice was explaining it to me I lived through it all in detail, and it wasnt pleasant. It took an hour and a half to change from that true Consciousness to the Individual consciousness. Because throughout the experience this present individuality no longer existed, this body no longer existed, there were no more limits, I was no longer herewhat was here was THE PERSON. An hour and a half was needed to return to the body-consciousness (not the physical consciousness but the body-consciousness), to the Individual body-consciousness.
The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain, a tiny point (Mother holds between her fingers a minuscule point in the space of her being). Yes, because I have a sore, a sore in a rather awkward place, and it hurts2 (Mother laughs). So I felt the pain: it was the sign of individuality coming back. Other than that, there was nothing any moreno body, no individual, no limits. But its strange, I have made a strange discovery3: I used to think it was the Individual (Mother touches her body) who experienced pain and disabilities and all the misfortunes of human life; well, I perceived that what experiences misfortunes is not the Individual not my body, but that each misfortune, each pain, each disability has its own individuality as it were, and each one represents a battle.
And my body is a world of battles.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if I am making myself clear. I thought for a time, a very long time, that if Science went to its furthest possible limits (if this is conceivable), it would join up with true Knowledge. In the study of the composition of matter, for exampleby pressing the investigation further and further ona point would be reached where the two would meet. But when I had that experience of passing from the eternal Truth-Consciousness to the consciousness of the Individualized world,1 well it appeared impossible to me. And if you ask me now, I think that this possibility of Science pushed to its extreme limits joining up with true Knowledge, and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world are both incorrect. There is something else.
And more and more these days, I find myself facing the whole problem as if I had never seen it before.
--
the Individual can give the initial impulse, point out the path, WALK the path himself (I mean show the path by realizing it) but he cant bring the work to fulfillment. The fulfillment of the work depends on certain collective laws that are the expression of a particular aspect of the Eternal and Infinitenaturally, its all one and the same Being! There arent different individuals and personalities, its all one and the same Being. But the same Being expressing itself in a particular way that for us translates as a group or a collectivity.
Well, thenany other questions on this?
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I shall write and tell you afterwards what this way of yoga is. Or if you come here I shall speak to you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written. At present I can only say that its root-principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete works and complete Bhakti [Devotion], to raise all this above the mind and give it its complete perfection on the supramental level of Vijnana [Gnosis]. This was the defect of the old yoga the mind and the Spirit it knew, and it was satisfied with the experience of the Spirit in the mind. But the mind can grasp only the divided and partial; it cannot wholly seize the infinite and indivisible. The minds means to reach the infinite are Sannyasa [Renunciation], Moksha [Liberation] and Nirvana, and it has no others. One man or another may indeed attain this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The Brahman, the Self, God are ever present. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the Individual and in the community, to realize God in life.
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the Individual process) is already what could be called a veiled shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isnt (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because its always a great power no matter where it awakens), theres inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
Its a problem. When you contact the Supraconscient and the Shakti emerges at the crown of the head, its something rising from below, isnt it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement?
--
It is the Individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being the part of us thats organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each human being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Thon called the psychic being. And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine sparkimmutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the psychic being.
Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divines work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a sort of reply to something I am translating in The Synthesis of Yoga. You know, there are these three aspects that must always be kept united in ones consciousness: jiva ( the Individual), Shakti, and Ishwara (the Supreme). He gives a wonderful description of how we have all three together in a kind of inner hierarchy. So while reading that (as I translate I have all the experiences, they come spontaneously), I kept saying to myself, No, that jiva hampers me; that jiva hems me in! Its not natural to me. Whats natural to me is its probably Mahashakti. There is always that sense of creative Power, and of the Lord. The infinite, marvelous, innumerable joy of the Lord, you see, which is so intermingled with the Poweryou can sense the presence of the Lord, yet you cannot distinguish or differentiate between the two. Its all a delectable play. So to introduce the Individual, the jiva, into this spoils everything, makes everything so small!
I wanted to put all this into my sentence.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its another story when it comes to doing yoga. Although that must depend entirely on the Individual. The Chinese dont have the same spiritual intensity you find rooted in the Indian characterits something completely different. Here, spiritual life is real, concrete, tangibletotally real. For the Chinese it all happens at the top of the head.
Theyre not going to come here, are they?
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day (for me now, everything is part of an extremely precise play of forces) and one day I had a sort of sensation of one of those profound upheavals something very widespread and full of GREAT pain. So something in me spontaneously sprang up from the Individual soul, the deep psychic being, and said, Oh! Lord, is it Your will that we have this experience again? Then everything stabilized, stopped, and there was a splendor of Light. But I received no response. Except for that splendor of Light something triumphant, you know. But it may just as well mean that no matter what happens, this will always be therewhich is obvious.
(silence)
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In order to be discernible, the cube was enveloped in something that looked like a kind of tulle, a tulle made of a pale gray substance, which expressed the Individual nonexistence, the perfect humility that completely abolishes the ego: because of that there wasnt the least possibility of egoif you ask me why, I cant say, but thats how it was. And I was seeing that tulle all the time something extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible, yet maintaining the cubes form. It was perfect humility (in the divine sense) and total absence of egothere wasnt even the memory or idea of it, nothing whatever: the abolition of the ego. And it served to receive that immobile immensity which manifested through an action of the Power. And then, the action of the Power. I was conscious (I was consciouswhere was I? I dont know; the cube represented my physical being: I had been TOLD it was my physical being), and I was watching it without being situated I myself had no precise place but could see and understand the whole thing. And I could discern all the action being done through the cube: this action for that thing, this for that, this for that the whole earth (gesture expressing forces radiating outward, each for a special purpose), things from the past and things FAR into the future.
And it was so imperative!
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At that moment, the physical being and the Individual, personal body had the experience once and for all.
The body always used to let itself be carried along. It was one in consciousness with Sri Aurobindos presence, and depended on it without the least worry; it felt that its life depended on it, its progress depended on it, its consciousness, its action, its power all depended on it. And no questionsit didnt question. For the body, it was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE that things could be otherwise. The very idea that Sri Aurobindo might leave his body, that that particular way of being might no longer exist for the body, was absolutely unthinkable. They had to put him in a box and put the box in the Samadhi for the body to be convinced that it had really happened.
0 1963-05-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It isnt role! The role is a fact, a sort of ineluctable fact, absolutely independent of the Individual will and consciousness I am more and more convinced of it, fantastically so. The Work is done through a certain number of elementswhe ther they are aware of it or not, whether they collaborate or not makes little difference. It has been decided that way, it has been chosen that way and it is done that way. Whether you like it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you collaborate or notvery little difference. Its more a question of personal satisfaction!
And in as much as the very cells of the body no longer feel their separateness (that is almost entirely gone, even in the sensation), then something is done (or takes place), but without any self-observation. Somewhere (gesture above), something knows, wills and acts; somewhere else, there is a certain number of things in a state of happy receptivity, and absolutely, extraordinarily passive, not interfering. And the less it observes, the better. It remains in an inner contemplation, or rather turned to the Heights (a Height that is everywhere, of course, not just above), a Height perfectly luminous, perfectly conscious, perfectly effective. And thats all that is needed.
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother looks at the Time magazine photo again:) With these photos its very interesting, I have intriguing experiences: all at once Ill see crystal clear (much clearer than I see physically), Ill see the Individual very clearlyhe comes alive, the eyes speak to meand Ill say, Oh, hes like this and like that. Everybody brings me photos, because I am used to reading peoples characters in their photos, thats very easy for me, elementary; but sometimes when I am given a photo, suddenly I see somebody and I say, Oh, but its such and such person, hes like this and like that. But if I am shown the SAME photo a few days afterwards, its just a photo and I see nothing. Its a method thats used to let me know certain things, and once I know them, its finished. For instance, the first time I saw this photo of the Pope, when they brought it to me, I saw the man (I know him, you see) JUST AS I see him over there. But if I look at it nowit doesnt evoke anything in me any more, only the kind of things you see in a photo: a mouth thats not good, far from it. Certainly, that he chose this photo means he LIKES authorityhe wants to be seen in his aspect of authority.
The odd thing is that he is seated [in the photo], while all the time I see him standing. He is seated with his hand on the armrest, but I keep seeing him standingholding his head high, facing life, standing. He must be fairly tall: the man I know is fairly tall, he looks very much like this one. Its unmistakable, I mean, when I saw the photo I saw the man I knew.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At times For the body its a constant worka constant laborvery tiny, of every instant, an unceasing effort, with, so to say, an imperceptible result (externally at any rate, quite nonexistent), so for someone who doesnt have my consciousness, its perfectly obvious that the body appears to wear out and age, to be slowly heading for decomposition: thats in everyones atmosphere and consciousness (Mother laughs), its the kind of appreciation and vibration thats being thrown all the time on this poor body, which besides is quite conscious of its infirmityit doesnt entertain any illusions! But that quiet, peaceful, but UNCEASING endurance in the effort of transformation makes it sometimes yearn for a little ecstasynot as an abolition or annihilation, not at all, but it seems to be saying, Oh, Lord, I beg you, let me be You in all tranquillity. In fact, thats its prayer every evening when people are supposed to leave it in peace (unfortunately they leave it in peace physically, but mentally they dont). But that I could cut off, I learned to cut off long, long ago, I could cut off, but something, I mean somewhere, someone doesnt approve! (Mother laughs) Obviously what the Someone the great Someonewants to see realized is perfect peace, perfect rest, and joy, a passive joy (not too active; a passive joy is enough), a passive, constant joy, WITHOUT forsaking the work. In other words, the Individual experience isnt regarded as all-importantvery far from it: the help given to the whole, the leaven which makes the whole rise, is AT LEAST equally important. Ultimately, thats probably the major reason for persisting in this body.
Nothing inside asks any questions, there are no problems there; all the problems I am talking about are posed by the body, for the body; otherwise, inside, everything is perfect, everything is exactly as it should be. And totally so: what people call good, what they call evil, the beautiful, the ugly, the all that is a small immensity (not a big immensity), a small immensity that is moving more and more towards a progressive realization thats the correct phrasewithin an integral Consciousness which integrally (how should I put it?) enjoys, or I could say, feels the plenitude of what He doesdoes, is and so forth (its all the same thing). But this poor body
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Which means there isnt one aspiration, not one effort that isnt useful seen from the terrestrial standpoint (from the Individual standpoint, this has been obvious for a very long time), but seen from the terrestrial standpoint, there isnt one effortnot one effort towards the Better, not one aspiration to the True that does not have terrestrial repercussions, terrestrial consequences.
A literal translation, using the words of Mother's own English translation which follows, would give:
0 1963-10-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If divine Love were to descend first, before divine Truth, certain beings with a special power or receptivity might draw it into themselves, personally, and then all those wrong impulses might occur.1 But if this divine Love descends only in the Truth, in the Truth-Consciousness, it will enter someone only if that person is ready to receive it. Without a preparation of Truth, there might occur a very powerful attraction of elements unable to keep that Love in its purity; whereas if the preparation of Truth has been done, with that preparation, It will CHOOSE, in order to manifest, the persons, the Individualities, who are ready.
***
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its too bad I cant keep note of all the experiences that come to me, because just these last few days, for a period of time, there was a very clear perception of the true functioning, which is the expression of the supreme Will and operates spontaneously, naturally and automatically through the Individual instrument; I could even say (because the mind is quiet, it keeps quiet): through the body. And the perception of the moment when this expression of the divine Will is blurred, distorted by the introduction of a desire, the special vibration of desire, which has a quality all of its own and which comes for many apparent reasons: its not only a thirst for something, a need for something or an attachment to something; that same vibration can be triggered by the fact that, for instance, the will expressed seems to be (or at any rate has been taken for) the expression of the supreme Will, but there has been a confusion between the immediate action which was evidently the expression of the supreme Will, and the result which was to follow from that actionits a very common mistake. People are used to thinking that when they want a particular thing, thats what should come; because their vision is too shorttoo short and too limited, not an overall vision which would make them see that that particular vibration is necessary to trigger a number of other vibrations, and that its the TOTALITY of them all that will have an effect, which isnt the immediate effect of the vibration that was sent out. I dont know whether this is clear, but its a constant experience.
If I gave an example, it would be easier to grasp, but it must be a lived example, otherwise its worthless.
0 1963-11-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From time to time, I have examples like that, where the experience corresponds almost exactly. I mean, ones idiosyncrasy, the Individual distortion, doesnt interfere: every individual has his own distortion whats the word? I know that it ends with -syncrasy (it was translated in me as idiot-syncrasy, but I am not sure if thats the word!).
Its a minimum of distortion. I am forever studying, in the body, the difference between THE Thing and its transcription. Its very interesting. Very subtlevery subtle. And it takes a mere nothing for it not to be the True Thing any more.
0 1963-12-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And everywhere, you see, not just my cells, not just the cells of this body: when the experience comes, it is quite widespread; I have an impression of many bloods, many cells, many nerves. Which means that the CENTRAL consciousness isnt always aware of it, the Individual isnt always aware of it (it has an extraordinary feeling, but it doesnt know what it is), while the cells are aware of it, but they cannot express it.
I felt that several times: when the experience comes, it isnt limited to one body. Only, the consciousness the observing consciousness isnt the same everywhere: there are DEGREES of consciousness, and here [in Mothers body] it appears to be a MORE CONSCIOUS center of consciousness, thats all; but otherwise For the consciousness itself its that way too: at times it is very much awake, at other times not so awake. Ultimately, all this is an experience of Oneness, of multiplicity in Oneness, and this experience depends on the degree of nearness and intensity. But it is the all the all which is oneand seen from the standpoint of the Lords consciousness. You know, what we call the Lord is that which is fully conscious of itself; and the more the consciousness diminishes, the more you feel its no longer the Lord but it is the Lord all the same!
--
The other state, the state in which there is me and other people, is becoming unpleasant; it brings things the consciousness disapproves of, reactions the consciousness disapproves of: Still this? Still this smallness, still this limitation, still this incomprehension, still this darkness? All the time like that. So, immediately, something within goes like this (gesture of inner reversal), and it becomes the other way. And the other way is so soft, oh! So soft, so smooth, without clashes, without friction, without unpleasant reactions thats what happened when there was that very painful grating during the meditation on the 9th it was because the Individual reactions of the cells were not in accord with the general harmony.
Its becoming a little interesting. Its a little new.
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother smiles) You know, there are, broadly speaking, two categories of people: those who by nature receive, are receptive; who receive and like to receive and to feel they are receiving; and those who like to give and like the feeling of giving. So those who like to receive have the experience of receiving, while those who like to give (laughing) have the experience of giving. But basically, its all the same thing: its the Force circulating. The Force circulates, and you get the feeling (how can I explain it?) it depends on the position of the consciousness with regard to the Individual ego.
When I noticed Ws difficulties, I put a lot of force on him, a lot, a great concentration to get him out of that tight corner, because I felt a kind of wavering in him, I felt he wasnt so steady on the path any more. Thats what worried me. So I put a very great concentration of force on him to set him on the right road again. And, as I said, the Force circulates; it circulates: it isnt something which goes out like that, like a little beam which you send out, which reaches its goal and stays there thats not it. Its a thing (round gesture) that spreads out with waves of concentration. And Ive noticed this for everybody (I did my first study on myself), but the ego must be completely (gesture of palms upward, immobile) must become nonexistent, must stop interfering, at any rate, in order to feel that great, universal Pulsation.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But he has given W a new mantraa mantra to Kali, with the sound of Kali! Yet W isnt on Kalis side,3 not in the least! Its things of this sort that I dont understand in X. Whereas I know so well the kind of force, the quality of power that not only influences but can be manifested by one person or another, here or there. X seems to do it according to tradition: you must first turn to this divinity, then to that one, then regardless of the Individuals quality. He doesnt seem to have a very great psychological insight into individuals.
When I sent him D. (you know, she is always ready to believe in any miraculous power), she went to him in good faith. He made outwardly every blunder that was needed to make her withdraw! So she withdrew.
0 1964-01-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the yoga having come down against the bed-rock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the Individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difficulties themselves are general in the Ashram as well as in the outside world.
The description follows. You would think it was happening now:
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ill have to find the way to organize this new type of experience and make use of it but I need to know how it comes about! Because when I was looking at those pictures, I wasnt at all in a special state, I was looking at them somewhat superficially I was finding them hm! I saw their effort to be artistic and I found the perspectives from which the photos were taken interesting, but thats all. The subjects except for the angler (there were more than four anglers in the book, mon petit!) and people sleeping in the street, things of that sort. And then people kissing everywhere: on chairs, on the banks of the Seine, on benches, in swings in amusement parks. And rather vulgar. But the photos, the patches of light and shadewell taken. I didnt want to tire my eyes reading those peoples literature, but it must be very modern probably there were some authors signatures! The signature alone was the portrait of the Individual: pretentious, affected.
The atmosphere of Paris is unbreathable. When I returned to France, first I fell sick, and then that atmosphere
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I noticed (Ive known it for some time, but it was quite concrete this time) that in my rest, as soon as I am at rest, the body is completely identified with the material substance of the earth, that is to say, the experience of the material substance of the earth becomes its ownwhich may be expressed by all sorts of things (it depends on the day, on the occasion). I had known for a long time that it was no longer the Individual consciousness; it isnt the collective consciousness of mankind: its a terrestrial consciousness, meaning it also contains the material substance of the earth, including the unconscious substance. Because I have prayed a lot, concentrated a lot, aspired a lot for the transformation of the Inconscient (since it is the essential condition for the thing to happen)because of that there has been a kind of identification.
Last night it became a certainty.
0 1964-03-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the advantage of the Individuality is that you can aim a beam at precise points (same gesture like a beacon) and obtain a resultnot in a miraculous way that leaves people open-mouthed and stupid, not that; but when the aspiration is sincere, when the will is sincere You know, what I do constantly is (gesture of offering): Lord, I cannot do it, do it for me. Lord, I cannot do it, do it for me. Well, thats what Sri Aurobindo said: if people around me do not have the direct Contact with the Lord (a contact I brought with my birth, of which I have grown more and more conscious, but which was the very source of this earthly existence), if they dont have that Contact, they can have a conscious contact with me; thats easy, because, of course, its something visible, tangible, with a real existence. So if one can be in that state of offering (not with words or sentences, but with a truly sincere feeling): No, I dont know how I can do it all by myself, how can I? Its such a formidable thing to do, how can I? How can I even discern exactly between the true movement and the untrue, or between the movement that leads to the Truth and No, I dont know I give it all to You, do it for me.
And that goes on twenty-four hours a day, and, I can say, as many thousand seconds as there are in a day, spontaneously, sincerely, absolutely (gesture of offering): Here, I give it to you. Oh, here comes a difficulty; oh, so-and-so has a difficulty; oh, these circumstances are bad, oh Here, here, here, I cannot sort it out with the knowledge I havedo what needs to be done; do what needs to be done, I give it to You. Its a gesture of every minute, every second.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That doesnt matter; what he needs is to learn to receive, to universalize his receptivity. Thats just what Sri Aurobindo was saying: that inwardness. Not to depend exclusively on outward means, but to lean more on the universal Will (gesture above the head) than on the Individual will; that way, you always have an inexhaustible source instead of depending on what you eat, how much rest you get, this and that.
Thats the method exactly: to broaden your receptivity indefinitely and depend on the forces that circulate constantly in the world, so that only the most physical materiality is dependent on food and sleep. Because even what you eat feeds you differently according to your receptivity, your inner attitude; there is a capacity for extracting the Force from things, which can be gained from a broadening of the receptivity.
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And once youve lived That you become so irrevocably conscious that everything depends on the Individual perception, entirely; and naturally, that individual perception [of divine Love] depends on the inadequacy, the inertia, the incomprehension, the incapacity, the cells inability to hold and keep the Vibration, anyway all that man calls his character and which comes from his animal evolution.
(silence)
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The question I am asking myself is whether the cells have an autonomous existence or whether they must remain aggregated in the way they are, obeying a collective consciousness.2 I do not mean the body consciousness, which is an entity; I mean: does the cell, as an individuality, have the will to remain in its present collectivity? Just as an individual willingly collaborates with a society, with an aggregate, does the Individual cell have the will to remain in its aggregate, or is it only the central consciousness that has that will?
They speak of the consciousness of EACH cell, which has its own life code, and communicates with the other cells for a particular work by sending out messages.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was the idea, I think, of all the apostles of renunciation: eliminate all that comes from outside or from below, so that if something from above manifests, you will be in a fit state to receive it. But from the collective point of view, its a process that may take thousands of years! From the Individual point of view, its possible; but then the aspiration to receive the true impulse should be kept intactnot the aspiration to total liberation, but the aspiration to the ACTIVE identification with the Supreme, in other words, to want only what He wants, to do only what He wants, to exist only through Him, in Him.
So the method of renunciation may be tried, but its a method for someone who wants to cut himself off from others. And can there be an integrality in that case? It doesnt seem possible to me.
0 1964-11-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Khrushchev affair has been a bad thing. But generally things in the outer world move in a zigzag; instead of going straight, they go like this (zigzag gesture): action, reaction, action, reaction. Thats what Thon always said: in the outer world, a victory for one side always means a sort of RIGHT to victory for the other side; and then he added, Those who know must be ever vigilant and on the alert, so that when the enemies win a little victory (which may be a perfectly superficial and insignificant victory), they immediately win a big victory! (Laughing) He said that with great humor. And I noticed that on the Individual level, its true. On the level of countries unfortunately, the people who determine the destiny of countries (the outer destiny) are incompetent and stupid, and they miss the opportunity. But that Khrushchev affair gave a right to a victory, you understand. It gave the other side a right to a victory.
I told you I would show you the photo of the man [Suslov] whos behind Khrushchevs downfall.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I noted it, too, it was that way with the body in the beginning: any unexpected vibration, more powerful, deeper, stronger, TRUER than the Individual vibration, and instantly there is a panic in the cells: Oh, whats going to happen to me! Now, thank God, that period is past, but there was a time when it was like that.
So you understand how long the way is. All that goes on in the mind is childs play in comparison; all their mental difficulties are to me its theatera drama, you know, a drama to interest the public.
--
If the action were individual, it would necessarily be extremely poor and limited; even if the Individual is very vast and his consciousness is as vast as the earth, the experience is limited. Its still one aggregate of cells, which can only have a limited sum of experiences (maybe not in the course of time, but undeniably in space). But the minute the identification with the rest takes place, the consequences take place, too: the difficulties of the rest come and have to be absorbed, they have to be transformed. So it amounts to the same thing. Its exactly whats going on now: I dont go out, I have limited my activities as much as possible (I see plenty of people, but still infinitely less than beforebefore, I used to see them by the thousand), but this reduction is largely made up for by the widening of the physical, material consciousness, to such a point that I constantly, constantly have sensations that seem like individual sensations, but immediately I can see that they are other individuals sensations, which come because the consciousness is spread out and receives all that in its movement: a movement as if one gathered everything together, then gave it to the Lord.
(silence)
0 1965-10-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, in the Individual or collective evolution, there are phases when you have emerged from the grating, that is to say, you no longer believe in it, no longer believe in the truth and importance, the reality of those things, but you dont have the other thing yet, so in between the two its austere, dull and cold. You no longer have the excitement of one thing, and not yet the joy of the other; you are in between the two and its a little arid. But only a small, limited number of individuals have reached that stage. They are the people who say, I dont want this world. And then they go away.
But as for the other thing
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, it may be materially diffused because the Individuals arent necessarily gathered together. But there arent many of them.
That idea of an urgent need to prepare humanity for the new creation, that impatience has disappeared.
0 1966-01-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only creation for which there is any place here is the supramental, the bringing of the divine Truth down on the earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into Matter. Our object is not to remove all limitations on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfillment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to do as we like, or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the Individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose. This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The principlenot principle, its not a principle the law seems to be the same for the Individual, worlds, and universes.
(long silence)
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So, if for some reason or other there is a disorganization (but I think the reason is one of teaching), one must have the capacity to go like this (Mother brings her two hands down in a gesture that immobilizes everything) and to stop all that instantly. But the capacity has been there for a long time, a long time (it hasnt always been used, but it has been there): the Power. And its the same with EVERYTHING: world events or natural or human upheavals, earthquakes and tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, floods, or else wars, revolutions, people killing each other without even knowing whyas they are doing at the moment: everywhere something pushes them on. Behind this quiver, there is a will for disorder that tries to prevent Harmony from being established. Its there in the Individual, in the collectivity, and in Nature. And then, its such a painstaking, persistent teaching, which forgets nothing and is repeated every time something isnt totally understood, and is repeated in greater detail for you to better understand the working: the working in the hands, in the activity, in the Force going through [Mother] like this, in the use of vibrationsand which teaches the great Lesson: learning how to manifest the divine Force.
Its absolutely wonderful.
0 1966-03-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, this same thing, this same experience in the cell-consciousness. What the human beings call life and death, the continuation of this present organization or its cessation, it was absolutely a question of choice (something like a choice there are some who say the Divines Will or the Supremes Will; it is a way of saying, but it is it is something that chooses). And there was at the same time the exact it was more than a feeling, it was a lived knowledge of what is the Individual and why the Individual and in what way the Supreme becomes the Individual and how He can continue to be the Individual or stop to be the Individual. Now that the experience is gone, naturally what I say has no meaning, but at that time it was the exact perception: the Individual is that (gesture), that position taken by the Supreme, and if He chooses to continue it continues.
It becomes quite material, you see, no more mental at all (it is very difficult to express because of that). It becomes a living experience of just what makes the Individual and how this individual can remain individual although it is united perfectly, united in perfect consciousness with the Supreme.
It lasted about fifteen to twenty minutes in complete stability and I continued doing my normal activities (it was during the time of my toilet I wash my mouth and gargle), purposely it comes at that time to show that it is absolutely independent from the activity. And it comes more often at that time than when I sit in meditation. When I sit in meditation generally begins a kind of all-around-the-earth activity or even universal activity, it becomes conscious of that, but this bodys experiences are not thereto have the body experience you must live in your body! It is why the ancient sages or saints didnt know what to do with the body, because they went out of it and sat, and then the body is no more concerned. But when you remain active, then its the body that has the experience.
0 1966-08-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The why is very simple: its always separation the Individual separating himself, always. So, according to everyones nature, there is more or less egoism, but there is separation. Now I see the false movement: its when the consciousness falls back into an old habit. And as its an old habitvery old habityou dont feel it as a fall: its a tiny little movement like this (Mother twists something between her thumb and index finger).
I knowthis morning, it was very clear.
You see, everything is the Supremes action to hasten the return of the Individual consciousness to the Consciousness the supreme Consciousness; so then, through the Individual (I dont know if youll be able to follow), the pressure of the Force to be accepted is turned into a will to make itself understood. Thats the distortion. And you see, its extremely subtle. But by will, I mean a will in the human way, you understand. The pressure of the Force (Mother lays her right hand flat on top of her left hand) to make itself understood by the consciousness (the left hand below), the pressure of the Force on the consciousness to transform it is turned in the intermediary individual into a will to make itself understood.
Another thing. There is instinctively, that is to say, almost subconsciously, almost involuntarily, not a will or an anxiety, or even a curiosity, but a sort of habit of observation: the habit of observing the effect produced on others (its not bluntly what they think or feel, their opinion; its not as blunt as that because as soon as it assumes that proportion it makes one smile). Its a sort of habit, a habit of looking at every circumstance not only as you see it, but, at the same time, as, lets say, others see it. Its not an anxiety but you take it into account; you take it into account not for its result, but you automatically take it into account in the reaction of the consciousness: what others feel, think, their reactions; not exactly their opinion, but the feeling of their reaction. Its a sort of habit. And that is the fallacious distortion of the sense of Oneness. Of course, we are all ONE, and in the distorted consciousness this oneness is translated as a noticing, an observation (I am not referring to those who are concerned with themselves and for whom its important, thats not what I mean: its in the functioning of the consciousness). And that movement of observation has a place, but in this form, its not a true place. So then, its so subtle. There is the sense of Oneness, that every movement of the consciousness has repercussions everywhere, in all consciousnesses because there is only one consciousness, and the distortions are different; its the distortions that make for diversity.
--
And what I am saying now isnt at all something I see, its something I lived during my morning walk at 4:30. There were different successive experiences [which Mother has just described], and then, a very clear, very keen perception of the point at which the true experience (same twisting gesture) gets falsified. And its not something violent, theres nothing dramatic to it, nothing at all, but its clearly the difference between the Infinite and Eternal, the All-Powerful [being turned] into the Individuality the Individual limitation. And for the ordinary consciousness, the usual consciousness that is to say, the limited, individual consciousness that experience itself is marvelous, but you are the recipient, you are the one who experiences. Thats the point, its the difference between the [pure] experience and, all of a sudden, the one who experiences. And then, with that the one who experiences, its over, everything is distorted. Everything is distorted, but not dramatically, you understand, not like that, no. Its the difference between Truth and falsehood. Its a falsehood (how can I explain?) its the difference between life and death; its the difference between Reality and illusion. And the one IS, while the other remembers having been, or is a witness.
Its very subtle, really very subtle. But its immenseimmense and total.
0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, its only when you are absolutely sure you have the vision of the truth that its legitimate to intervene. Not only that, but also the clear vision of consequences. In order to intervene in anothers actions, you must be a propheta prophet. And a prophet with total benevolence and compassion. You must even have the vision of the consequence the intervention will have in the others destiny. People are constantly giving each other advice: Do this, dont do that. I see that, they dont realize the extent to which they create confusion, they add to the confusion and disorder. And sometimes they harm the Individuals normal development.
I consider opinions to be always dangerous things, and most of the time without any value whatever.
0 1966-10-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Individual has a certain relationship or set of relationships with the Universal, and there must be a rhythm, things recur automatically at the same point in time. So every year, it should be possible to take stock with regard to whats below and whats above, or to whats behind and whats ahead.
It must be like that, because for you, the stocktaking began at the beginning of this month. And then it results in those birthday cards and in what I am going to tell you on your birthday. (None of this is thought out: it comes just like that, its very amusing, I witness a continuous spectacle.) And I saw something very interesting, maybe thats what I wanted to tell you for your book.1
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have seen relatively clearly that that trance depended on the ratio between two aspects (the proportion between two aspects): that of the Individual transformation (that is, the transformation of this body), and that of the general, collective and impersonal work.
If a certain balance is kept, that state (of prolonged trance) may be dispensed with, but then the same work which would have been done in a few weeks or a few months (I dont know) will extend over yearsyears and years. So its a question of patiencepatience isnt lacking. But its not only a question of patience; its a question of proportion: there must be a certain balance between the two, between the pressure from outside of the external work (not external, the collective work), and the pressure on the body for its transformation. If wisdom is still there, that is, if the instrument is constantly and infallibly capable of doing exactly what is expected of it (to put it into words: the supreme Lords precise will), then the trance would not be necessary. It would only be if there is a resistance in the execution (out of ignorance).
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thon, for his part, insisted very much on adverse forces, while Sri Aurobindo didnt talk about them. So when I came here I asked him, But do hostile beings and adverse forces exist? He said to me, Yes, they exist, but in order to master them its easier to regard them as being outside, rather than inside as a part of your nature. He insisted on the One: everything is the One distorted to a greater or lesser extent, even the adverse forces. What we call adverse forces are, at bottom, distortions of consciousness. When those distortions predominate in a being, that is to say, when his nature obeys distorted influences and no longer responds to the divine influence, we may call it a hostile being (they do exist, God knows!). But here in India, they have insisted above all on the notion of Oneness. Of course, at the origin of the worlds a separation took place, but its mainly the Tantrics who have insisted on that; they say that in order to re-form Godhead, the two poles must be reunited. All this is words, a manner of speaking that fills the gaps and complements each other. And depending on the Individuals, the times and countries, there were manners of speaking more or less pure, some closer than others. But all said and done We could say that the Lord enjoys narrating Himself in all possible ways.
And when you are on the very lowest rung of the ladder of consciousness, those manners of speaking become increasingly concrete, absolute, hard, and exclusive of all that isnt themselves: those are religions. Oh, by the way, it seems the Pope was approached about Auroville and he asked if there would be a Catholic church! They put the question to me. I said, No. No churches, no temples.
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the Individual standpoint, there was a time (besides, it was fairly widespread in people who dealt with so-called occult things) when it seemed thrilling to know ones past lives, ones past experiences; but as soon as I came here and I understood the change that Sri Aurobindo had brought about, I found all that absolutely immaterial. Its childish curiosity. It doesnt help you in any way, its merely either to glory in it or for fun, but its unimportant. Some people still write to me, Will you please tell me what my past lives were? I answer them, Its not interesting. Whats interesting is the life you want to realize, not the errors you made in the past!
(silence)
0 1967-05-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These experiences always start from the small circle of the Individual as being the best known and most easily observable point, then they begin to spread out, finally extending all over the earth. Its been like that each time. But then, the sense, the perception of the difference between what is and whats trying to be is so huge Its only because the surrender is there (and has always been there! It wasnt denied at that time, far from it! It was there), that alone helps to go through.
The perception of that immense Wisdom, you know, total, carrying everythingin every detail, with all the conscious detailscarrying everything towards the future perfection (a growing perfection, always a future perfection): thats what saves you from being crushed, otherwise otherwise the contrast is a bit crushing.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, the story of the soul leaving the body, is childishness! Because I had that experience too, of leaving (not the soul! Its entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving the psychic being, the Individual psychic being. When I left here in 1915, I left my psychic being here deliberately. I left it here, I didnt take it with me. Consequently, the body can live without the psychic being (it was rather sick, by the way, but that wasnt the reasonits again the taste for drama! Oh, always the taste for drama!).
There we are.
--
Its more difficult however, to live without the psychic being. The psychic being, of course, is the covering the Individualized coveringbetween the eternal soul and the transitory body; and it becomes formed, individualized, it becomes more and more individually conscious. When that leaves the body, the rest generally follows. But I myself have had the experience of doing it deliberately, so I KNOW. One has to know how to do it, but it can be done. My psychic being stayed here with Sri Aurobindo, and I left with my mental, vital and physical beings. It was a slightly precarious condition. But as I also kept the contact quite consciously, it could be done.
What people call death I see lots of people who to me are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact with their soul). But to know that, one must have the inner vision. But what people call death, that is, the decomposition of the cells and dissolution of the form, is when the most material vital subdegree, which brings into contact with Lifewith the vital force, lifegoes out. That is how death occurs in animals, for example. And that vital subdegree generally goes away when the external organism is unable to continuewhen, for instance, its cut in two or the heart has been removed, or anyway when something quite radical has happened to it! Because some people have met with accidents and had many parts missing, yet they lived on. But even cardiac arrest I can say, even that doesnt necessarily mean death, since after stopping, the heart can start up again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that during a few I dont know if it is a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition its over, naturally.
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the Individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is Divine Purity.1 What does Divine Purity mean? It means that the Divine receives the divine influence alone! I understand! Or else, the Individual receives nothing but the divine influencehere, mon petit. (Mother gives the flower)
***
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo said it several times: as soon as the being is annulled, the essence, the essential purpose of individualization immediately reappears WITHOUT the egos limits. But what you are speaking of, that sort of anguish that makes one stop,4 is a necessary movement till the whole being is ready, because if that annulment of the personality, of the Individual, took place before all the elements of the body, or even of the vital or the mind, were ready you understand, it would be dissolved, and then theres no knowing what would happen. So this need to get a grip on oneself occurs until one is entirely readywhen one is ready, one can let oneself go. And as soon as the fusion is done (what can I call it?) not the law but what we might call the raison dtre [of individualization] comes back, and without the egos limitations.
I had that experience in the vital and in the mind; now I see that its the same in the body, that there is still a recall because this or that part, this or that element isnt yet ready and one has to wait until its ready. But in fact, in this mornings experience, all that remained was like pieces of bark floating about.
--
In my life, I have been given so many, so many experiences, as proof that EVERYTHING is possible. For instance, when I was twenty-two, one night, after an experience I had in the night (I forget the details of it) at the time women wore dresses that exactly touched the ground, just touched it without resting on it (gesture of skimming the ground), and in my experience at night, I had grown tallin the morning, there was one inch between the dress and the ground! Which means that the body had grown one inch WITH THE NIGHTS EXPERIENCE. You see, in the nights experience I had grown tall (I dont remember the details), and in the morning And Ive been given that material verification for many such experiences, so as to be sure, so the body may be convinced without having to repeat the experiences over and over again. So it KNOWS, it knows there is nothing impossible, it knows impossible doesnt mean anything. But it doesnt depend on an individual will, you understand. The Consciousness which rules things is a marvel of wisdom, patience, compassion, endurance. When there is destruction or disorder, it means its absolutely unavoidable, absolutelybecause matters resistance in the Individual or in things is so strong that it quite naturally brings about disorder or destruction. But that doesnt form part of the Action, the supreme Action, which is a marvel. The body has understood that; it has understood, it is patient. Only, from time to time (how can I put it?) There are people whom I prevent from dyingseveral people. I dont yet have the consciousness, the conscious power to cure them, but the possibility is there and I maintain it above them. That is to say, its not all-powerful in the sense that a certain receptivity, a certain response, a certain attitude are necessary which arent always there (human natures are very fluctuating, there are ups and downs and more ups and downs, and that makes the work very difficult), but at times, during a down spell, when a being suffers or sags, there is something in the consciousness [of Mother], a compassion (how can I explain that?) Affliction and all those movements are movements of weakness, but that is something at once very strong and very sweet, almost like sorrow, and the whole, entire consciousness in the body rises like a prayer and an aspirationa pure prayer: Why are things still in this pitiful state, why? Why? And it instantly has an effect [in the sick person]. Unfortunately, the effect doesnt last; it doesnt last because certain conditions in others are still necessary. But its wonderful, you know! Its something so wonderful. And it makes one understand the necessity of a presence on this side, a presence capable of feeling, understanding still IN THE OTHER WAY, so the suffering of others may be a reality. And that also is taken into account, that also means time is needed, patience is needed. Now the body knows ittheres no longer any impatience; there is only, now and then, that sort of sorrow, especially when beings are full of aspiration, goodwill, faith, and in spite of it this suffering is still there, clinging. That on one side, and on the other, one thing: there is still a sort of horror and reprobation of acts of cruelty, of THE cruelty; thats And then, there is this awesome Poweryou feel, you can feel that a mere nothing, a simple little movement would, oh, bring about a catastrophe. So you have to keep that still, still, still so what happens may always be the best.
Now stupidity, imbecility, ignorance, all those things are looked at with a patience which waits for them to grow. But bad will and crueltyespecially viciousness, cruelty, what LOVES to cause suffering thats still difficult, one still has to keep a hold on oneself. In figurative language (not language, but a way of being), its Kali that wants to strike, and I have to tell her, Keep still, keep still. But thats a human transcription. All those gods, all those beings are real, they exist, but its a transcription. True truth is beyond all that.
0 1968-02-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday I was shown the photo of a man who is the guru of many people.1 I do not know what he claims to be, but he is an Indian who went to Europe and America and has lotsthousands and thousandsof disciples, followers, believers. He says there is only one way to bring peace on earth, and that is total and complete freedom: intellectual and moral freedom, of course, but also vital and physical freedom. That is, freeing oneself from all subjections and all laws, living according to ones own impulsion. Then, he says, something (I forget what he calls it) will govern you and will make you do what must be done. Its not the Individual who decides, its that. And if he is asked, But how? How do you know that is it? How do you find that?, he simply answers, Come and sit down beside me in meditation, and you will know. And he is convinced he can bring peace to earth with that.
I saw his photo yesterday. Vitally, he is extraordinarily strong. I dont know if its his own force or if its what he receives from others, because you can find that out only through physical contact.
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For three things one should be on ones guard. One is the collective suggestion of diseasedisease is something that doubtless exists, in the sense that there are obviously adverse forces at work trying to disorganize and delay the work; but, for the Individual, those so-called diseases Outwardly they are based on the idea (they call it knowledge), on the knowledge of microbes, germs and so on, but thats taking things upside down, heels over head, because those microbes and germs and all those things are EFFECTS, not causes.
Its the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertiaits all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effectdeath. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.
0 1968-03-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came in the wake of a sentence someone had written (I forget who, some writer or another), which said (I am adapting it), When one sees how humorous the creation is, one is certain that the Creator must be smiling. With that sentence, I saw how relative the clothing is in the human consciousness there is no absolute, no absolute expression, the expression is always relative, and the impression it leaves is relative to the Individual perceiving it.
I am trying to express it, but it was a concrete experience: the relativity of the mental clothing on the action of the higher Consciousness.
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be (maybe, because as soon as you try to formulate, you mentalize, and as soon as you mentalize, it gets shrunk, diminished, limited, it loses the power of truth but anyway), it may be that in this universe as it is constituted, perfection is (Mother remains absorbed for a long time). It eludes words. We might put it this way (but its dry and lifeless): its the perception (is it only perception? Its not just perception; its neither perception nor knowledge nor awareness), its the awareness of the oneness of the wholea oneness perceived, lived, realized in the Individual. But thats nothing, mere words. The universe seems to have been created to realize this paradox of the awareness of the whole, an awareness lived (not just perceived but lived) in every part, every element making up the whole.
So in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call good and evil; but from the point of view of sensationsensation in the most material partwe may say its suffering and Ananda. And the movement is to put a stop to all separation and to realize the total consciousness in every part (which mentally speaking is absurd, but its like that).
0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It far exceeds the Individuals, you understand, thats the important point.2
"Golconde" is a guest-house in the Ashram.
0 1968-06-08, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now, I see its quite spontaneous. Here in India, with the notion of guru, of Avatar, you may recognize him, admit him, but he is there exclusively to satisfy all demandsnot because he has put on a human body, but because he is the representative of the supreme Power, and you accept the supreme Power, you pretend to obey it, you surrender to it, but with, at the back of your mind, He is there only to satisfy my desires. The quality of desires depends on the Individual: for some, its the most petty personal desires; for others its big desires for all humanity, or even for greater realizations, but anyhow it amounts to the same thing. That seems to be the condition for surrendering (!)
To emerge from that, one must emerge from the human consciousness, that is, from the active, acting consciousness.
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Individualization, in its feeling or perception or impression, in its sense of separate individuality, has no lasting truth. It continues to exist (how should I put it?) in all its power and all its knowledge, but with the sense of Oneness. Which is altogether different. And there is such a clear perception of what comes into the consciousnesses, into the Individuals, what comes from the falsehood of separation; there always remains something, but sometimes it grows dim almost to the point of disappearing (thats in exceptional cases or exceptional beings). But the sense of division must completely disappear. Its
To explain anything at all I would have to say too many things.
--
Thats what we might call the Individual work. Only, to what extent can this transformation be integral? Thats the question. Ive said its a much accelerated work, obviously, but in spite of that, you feel the amount of experiences necessary for the transformation is so tremendous that the limits of a lifetime are too short. But then Ive already told you several times that this aggregate has not an impression, but a very clear perception that a certain disequilibrium or disorder (which may apparently be very slight, a mere nothing) is enough to cause dissolution. It feels that the slightest thing is enough, and that only the higher Will to keep it together is preventing things from reaching that stage. Like that. It depends on That. I lived the first thirty years of my life (nearly thirty, twenty-five to thirty) with the sensation that NOTHING could bring about dissolution; that if disorder came, order would quite naturally be restored to allow the body to go on. Very strong, it was very strong. Then there was a period when there was nothing, neither on one side nor on the other; and then, slowly, slowly, there has now come the perception that the LEAST thing is enough, and that its only the SUPREME Will (not even higher: the supreme Will) that is preventing dissolution. It exclusively depends on That.
And as you say, this presence is maintained to the extent its useful and indispensable for a certain aspect of the work. And in that case, theres no question of a long or short time, of when, how, what and all that Its as You will. Constantly, in every cell, every activity, every moment: What You will, Lord. All the time. Like that. No question. Only, there is an observation, a very clear perception of the fact that this supreme Will is what enables things to carry on as they do.
0 1968-07-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The cells have an internal constitution or structure that corresponds to the structure of the universe. So the connection is made (one is stopped short by the stupidity of words: its not external, but its external for the Individual), its made between identical external and internal states, that is to say, the cell, in its internal constitution, receives the vibration of the corresponding state in the total constitution.
Words are inane.
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if its because of this cold, I am not sure (I dont think so I know very well where it comes from), the whole morning (during the night and the morning), there has been a sort of perception of all kinds of states of consciousness this body has been through, groups of circumstances, and then a perception so concrete, you know, so absolute: Where is the person? Where, where is the Individual? Where is the person? Where And with such a clear vision of the supreme Consciousness, which, on the other hand, is the ONLY permanent consciousness the supreme Consciousness at play in all that, all those movements, all those actions, all those But it was felt and lived in such a concrete way that I saw, for instance, that this body, which people think is the same body as the one born more than ninety years ago, isnt at all the same! Everything has changed: the cells have changed, everything! Everything: the state of consciousness is absolutely different. So then, where is the person? Where? Suddenly there was, Where, where is that personality? Where is it? There was only That (gesture above): Consciousness. And then, the vision of the whole, of things taking form and (wavy gesture of a Whole diversifying into innumerable forms).
In other words, that experience one generally has in the higher mind, in the psychic, is now the bodysits the body in its cellular constitution that has it. It had that experience this morning: That alone was permanent, That which, through innumerable changes, remains (immutable, unshakeable gesture with the edge of the hand).
0 1968-07-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the Individual.
Oh, thats a revelation! I didnt know that.
--
Do you imply that the Supermind will not be obliged to respect the freedom of the Individual?
(Sri Aurobindo replies:)
0 1968-08-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The bodys state of consciousness and the quality of its activity depend on the Individual or individuals among whom it is.
Ah, that was very interesting! It was very interesting because I saw like this (gesture like a film unfolding), it was changing. If someone came near me, it would change. Near me were P., V., the doctor, and C. less often, now and then, but C. didnt have much effect on the atmosphere. But the other three, especially P. and V. One day, mon petit, I dont know what happened to them: they were superhuman. A day when I must have been apparently in danger, I dont know. One day, the whole day long, the pictures (not pictures: those places where I was) were so wonderfully beautiful, harmonious. It was inexpressible, inexpressible. And with the slightest thing changing in their consciousness, lo and behold, everything would start changing! It was a sort of perpetual kaleidoscope, day and night. If there had been some way to record it it was unique. Unique. And the body was in it, you understand, almost porousporous, without resistance, as if the thing were passing through it.
0 1968-09-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a whole side of human thought which has held the conception that identification with the supreme Consciousness could only come through the abolition of the Individual creation, but in fact Sri Aurobindo said it was possible WITHOUT doing away with the creation. They hold the conception that the creation must be done away with because they dont take the creation beyond the human creationits impossible for man, but possible for the supramental being. And that will be the essential difference of the supramental being: being able, without losing a limited form, to unite his consciousness with the supreme Consciousness.
But its impossible for man. That I know.
0 1968-10-30, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be an individual consciousness, not necessarily an impersonal one; for the Individual consciousness, too, its like this: a great curve (Mother draws a trajectory up to a point), and like a springboard to go farther. So it was a vision like that, of something developingdeveloping while it expands and grows illumined.
We might say, the Consciousness growing more and more conscious of itself. That was the impression.
0 1968-11-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only, the other consciousness is still there. Just now, this morning, I saw a considerable number of people: everyone of them came, and I looked (there was no I looked: for the PERSON there, it was like that, I was looking at him), the eyes were fixed [on the person] like that, and then there was the perception and vision (but not vision as its understood: its all a phenomenon of consciousness), the awareness of the Presence; the Presence permeating that sort of bark, of hardened thing, permeating, permeating everywhere. And when I look, when the eyes are fixed, it makes a sort of concentration [of this Presence]. But its certainly quite a transitory and intermediate state, because the other consciousness (the consciousness that sees things and deals with them as usual, with the perception of what goes on in the Individual, what he thinksnot so much what he thinks as what he feels, the way he is), thats there. Its obviously necessary, too, to maintain contact, but Its clearly still an experience, not an established fact. What I mean by established fact is the consciousness established in such a way that nothing else exists, it alone is presentits not yet like that.
(long silence)
0 1969-01-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many of them, I am sure, have suppressed desires and all kinds of such things in a state of ferment. But the body kept very still with that [superman consciousness] around it, and the Consciousness kept saying to him, the Individual is nothing, abdicate, abdicate the Individualbe sincere, abdicate the Individual. The supreme Consciousness alone is. It didnt touch him. I dont know if something in him received it, but he didnt notice it. Well see.
Jain sadhus or monks cover their mouths with a patch of cloth so as not to swallow microbes.
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
5) Should we let the Individual initiative manifest freely, personal action be impelled by inspiration and intuition, and turn down any suggestion which the Individual concerned does not feel to be good?
To be viable, this would demand that all Auroville workers should be yogis, conscious of the Divine Truth.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why in the past it was taught that all that happens is the effect of the Divines Will. The way it was put was limited (its always the same thing: the way things are put causes a restriction or a coloration, or its shown from a particular angle the thing loses its essential truth), but I am sure it was said for its psychological effect. The danger of this teaching is that people slump down and dont budge anymore, they stop doing anythingno more effort of progress, no more effort to do some good work, they remain like that: I dont have to do anything anymore, its God who does everything! Thats why it cant be put in that way. But it does have an advantage, that of leaving you absolutely peaceful. And I insist a lot on people having this peace, this tranquil peaceits COMPLETELY indispensable. I saw (with the help of this Consciousness, in fact), I saw the force of power acting; and when the instrument (that is, the Individual or the group) is wholly peaceful and trusting, like that, vitally and mentally still, the force goes through without being distortednothing distorts itand acts with its full power. As soon as there is a human consciousness (either a mental or a vital one, or both) which is agitated, or questions, or has preferences, or thinks it knows very well, or it makes a sort of whirl and the Force loses three-fourths of its power!
So we have to use one means or another (people dont understand, they always half understand); as for me, I spend my time telling them, Be in peace, be in peace. But of course, they might also become inert, like that. Theres no knowing what to do.
One morning, with this Consciousness I had that experience of power (the true power): how, when it goes through a perfectly static, still, peaceful consciousness, theres no distortion; and how, going through it, it awakens in the Individual a sense of power and the collaboration of the Individual will. If it is (I saw the two things at the same time), if its a yogic consciousness with the calm and IMPERSONALITY (that is, without any desire and any preference), then its STILL MORE POWERFUL, because its directed towards a precise spot instead of working in a general wayits directed towards a precise spot, and the action is multiplied. But if, in the consciousness through which the force is to act, there is the LEAST desire, the LEAST preference, or the least recoil everything is spoilt. Everything is spoilt: it goes like this (gesture of trepidation), and its over. I saw that, with examples to back it up; not narrated examples, theres nothing mental: everything shownshown with vibrations. And thats really interesting. It means that in the superman consciousness, with the full impersonalization (that is, no preference, no desire, no refusal, nothingyou are like this [gesture of an immobile Witness]), there will be the capacity to direct the Power for it to act on a PRECISE POINT, and then it will be multiplied in Matter. A multiplication of power, that is, an intensification of power in Matter.
That explains (its the body which is learning all that, its really very happy), that very clearly explains to the body why there have been individuals and their purpose in the whole but those individuals must lose all that was necessary to form them; they must go beyond that and become divine again. Then then the result will be extraordinary.
--
There is also quite a clear perception of the Individual reaction; for instance, the way faith manifests in people, in different individuals, the coloration it takes, the amount of (what should I say?) ignorance or falsehood added to it, and the amount that remains pure. Theres constantly, constantly a work of that kind, all the time. I find it very interesting.
And it is beginning to understand why this is like this, why that is like that.
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Before one takes a first step into the great Kingdom, I think one must have definitively felt all mental comprehension, all mental illumination, and naturally all mental explanation, to be worthless or inadequate. For more than ten years I have not read any book, but if I am given one in my hands, I immediately know the level of its vibration, In order to see clearly, one must get out of it, obviously. The same goes for the little individualrenouncing the Individual is what you call saintliness, but its merely the beginning of Humanity! Does one renounce an anthill?One gets out of it! And it is wide and joyful. We are right in the middle of human infancy.
S.
0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was on the scale of the universenot on the scale of the Individual.
I draw a line between the two to express that they didnt come together.
--
All human reactions, even the highest, the purest, the noblest, it all seemed so childish! Theres a sentence Sri Aurobindo wrote somewhere, which kept coming back to me (one day, I forget where, he wrote something, a rather long sentence), and in it, there was, And when I feel jealous, I know that the old man is still there.1 I read it more than thirty years ago maybeyes, about thirty years agoand I remember that when I read jealous, I thought, How can Sri Aurobindo be jealous! Then, thirty years later, I understood what he meant by being jealousits not at all what people call jealous, its quite another state of consciousness, which I saw clearly. And this morning, it came back: And when I feel jealous, I know that the old man is still there. This morning, I understood. Being jealous, for him, isnt what we call being jealous. Its this infinitesimal fragment which we call the Individual, this infinitesimal parcel of consciousness, which puts itself at the center, which becomes the center of the perception. And then it perceives things coming like this (gesture to oneself) or going like this (gesture away from oneself), and all that doesnt come to it gives it a sort of perception that Sri Aurobindo called jealousy: the perception that things go towards diffusion instead of coming towards centralization. Thats what he called being jealous. So then, he said, When I feel jealous (thats what he meant), I know that the old man is still there, which means that that infinitesimal fragment of consciousness can STILL be at the center of itself: its the center of action, the center of perception, the center of sensation.
(silence)
0 1969-11-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its IN THE WORK ITSELFI see thatits in the work itself that the other work, the Individual work of the bodys transformation, is done; if we were concentrated on this [the body], we would probably upset many things. Its better to Its by doing the work as we should that the body is put in the condition necessary for it to benefit from the
As for me, my impression was that mental activity acted as a buffer, if you like, and prevented
0 1969-12-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. But I can see, thats what Sri Aurobindo also had: there is a certain power that comes from the contact with the supramental forces, which Sri Aurobindo had, and which I have experienced (when I said, He takes things away as one would do with ones hand, and nothing remains), but its not cured, in the sense that out of weakness one lets the ailment come back. I clearly see that, I have the same experience now, but thats not what I call cure; and I clearly see that to cure, something else would be needed. Something else would be needed. Ultimately to put it quite tritely, one can cure only if the disease isnt necessary to the Individuals development.
One can give the body an indication of the direction it should follow in order to be cured, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it wont do it.
0 1969-12-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, I heard Sunils music (and it was so interesting because of that). Its very fine, his music, and then this Consciousness showed me how You see, the consciousness here takes a certain attitude, and it has the whole joy and harmony; the thing remains the same, but then (Mother makes a gesture of a slight tipping to the left) a very slight change in the attitude of the consciousness, and it becomes almost unbearable! Experiences of that sort, all the time, all the time to show you that in reality, only ONE THING matters, its the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the Individual being (Mother makes a gesture of contraction into oneself), or this (gesture of expansion). Probably it must be (to put it into words we can understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition of the ego. Thats it.
And then, as I said, for all the most ordinary activities of life, there is the demonstration that if the presence is tolerated (certainly in order to make you understand what it is), it can actually throw you off balance from the standpoint of health, and that the only remedy is the disappearance of the egoand along with it, the disappearance of the whole discomfort. For the things we regard as the most indifferent, the most Its for everything, just everything, all the time, all the time, night and day.
0 1970-01-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats just what I was seeing, I understand why. This morning the problem was there: the Individual consciousness, even very vast, cannot realize, that is to say, cannot concretely understand the possibility of being conscious of everything at the same time. Because thats not the way it is. So it finds it difficult to understand that THE Consciousness is conscious of EVERYTHING at the same time: in the whole, in the totality as well as in the smallest detail. That
Yes, its difficult. But its comforting!
0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If Sri Aurobindo refers to moral pain, whatever it may be, I can say from experience that the four stages he speaks of correspond to four states of consciousness that stem from the inner development and the degree of union with the divine consciousness obtained by the Individual consciousness. When the union is perfect, there only remains the fiercer form of delight.
If he refers to physical pain endured by the body, the experience does not follow so clearly defined an order, all the more so as union with the Divine most often causes the pain to disappear.
0 1970-04-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical Nature does not mean the body alone but the phrase includes the transformation of the whole physical mind, vital, material naturenot by imposing Siddhis [occult powers] on them, but by creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the supramental being in a new evolution. I am not aware that this has been done by any Hathayogic or other process. Mental or vital occult power can only bring Siddhis of the higher plane into the Individual lifelike the Sannyasi who could take any poison without harm, but he died of a poison after all when he forgot to observe the conditions of the Siddhi. The working of the supramental power envisaged is not an influence on the physical giving it abnormal faculties but an entrance and permeation changing it wholly into a supramentalised physical. I did not learn the idea from Veda or Upanishad, and I do not know if there is anything of the kind there. What I received about the Supermind was a direct, not a derived knowledge given to me; it was only afterwards that I found certain confirmatory revelations in the Upanishad and Veda.
11 September 1936
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O my unique Love which sprang from my heart and filled it so much that it made my life blossom. O my Lord of unique Love who has given himself to me wholly and by the Grace-Light has transmuted me. My Love that has entered and unified with me in my heart, so as to transform my body into a golden body. The skin has become supple, the influx of the nervous current all over the body is vibrating, with pauses in between; the bones have become pliable and plastic in their nature; the soft muscles have become truly loosened; the blood has become condensed within; the semen has become concentrated into a single drop and confined in the chest; the petals of the brain2 have blossomed or expanded; amrita [nectar of immortality] is welling up into springs all over the body and filling it up; the luminous forehead perspires; the luminous face brightens up; the breath full of peace becomes cool and refreshing; the inner smile beams up; the hair stands on end; tears of joy flow down towards the feet; the mouth vibrates into the passionate calling [of the Divine]; the ear tubes ring with the sense of musically humming sound; the body has become cool; the soft chest moves; the hands join [as in prayer]; the legs revolve or spin round; the mind melts sweetly, the intelligence becomes full of light; the will becomes full of joy and harmony; the Individuality has enlarged itself everywhere; the heart has blossomed into the universality of feeling so as to be felt by the world outwardly; the whole knowledge-body has become blissful; even the spiritual egoism of the senses has gone away; the senses (tattva) have been replaced wholly by the truth (sattva), the truth-principle or truth-substance which alone prevails now uniquely; attachment to objects of the senses and to things of the world has dissolved away, and only the aspiration and will towards the illimitable Grace grows and intensifies.3
And how long did he live like this?
0 1970-07-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tend to regard his whole stand as rather fantastic; it shows me that T. has failed to understand Sri Aurobindos vision, work and yoga at their true value. I believe that not only the collective supramentalization , but the Individual supramentalization have never been attempted previously, not to speak of realization. Even the full knowledge of the Supramental through an ascent into the Supramental and a sovereign entry into the Supramental has not been done. How then can one speak of a practical realisation of the full dynamics of the supramental descent?
At least that is what I understood from a study of Sri Aurobindos and your writings. Am I wrong? A clear indication from you would be very helpful to make us see things in the true light.
0 1970-07-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Previously when I used to have experiences (long ago, years ago), it was the mind that benefited more or less, and then it would spread it, use it; now its not like that: its directly the body, its the body that has the experience, and its MUCH TRUER. Theres an intellectual attitude that puts a kind of veil or I dont know, something something unreal on the perception of thingsan attitude, its an attitude. Its like seeing through a certain veil or a certain something a certain atmosphere, whereas the body feels the thing in itself, it BECOMES that. It feels in itself. Its not as if the thing were taken like this (gesture of absorption in oneself), its as if the body itself BECAME that (gesture of bursting or expansion). Instead of shrinking the experience down to the Individuals scale, the Individual widens to the scale of the experience.
(Mother goes into a contemplation)
0 1971-10-30, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was to realize the phenomenon of a consciousness which would have at once an individual consciousness the Individual consciousness we have naturally and a consciousness of the whole, a consciousness (how to put it?) it could be called global. But both consciousnesses merge into something which we have yet to find.
A consciousness at once individual and total. And all the work is to merge the two consciousnesses in a consciousness which is both at once. That is the next realization.
--
But the Individual consciousness is not at all a falsehood, it has to be associated with the consciousness of the whole so as to make another kind of consciousness which at the moment we still dont have. Not that it will cancel out the other, you understand? There has to be an adjustment, a different aspect, I dont know so that the two can manifest simultaneously.
For example, right now I am having a whole series of experiences concerning the latent power of creation of the Individual consciousness, I mean the capacity we have of knowing thingsknowing or wanting them, as we sayin the Individual consciousness before they take place. We say I want this, but thats merely an intermediary device, its actually the consciousness on the way to something and having at once the vision of what is to be and the capacity to realize it.
Thats the next stage. Afterwards.
So, for us, meaning for the Individual consciousness, that is translated by time, the time it takes to. I dont know how to say it.
This is the way I feel: no longer this, not yet that; and theres no need to leave one to be the other the two must combine and give birth to something new.
0 1971-11-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You remember, I had told you that the Divine wanted the Individual consciousness to have the experience of the Divine; well that was it. That was it, it was the Individual consciousness (since I became conscious of it) seeing the world. All of a sudden the world became what it is for the Divine. It is indescribable.
Obviously it has to begin with the consciousness, and afterwards, little by little, things will become such, meaning, become aware of themselves such as the Divine is aware of them.
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its possible. Its possible. But would you accept what happened to me, that is, the Individual, the person feels itself absolutely stupid?
Oh, Im ready!
0 1972-01-12, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You said that the goal of creation is to join within the Individual the total Consciousness (the consciousness of the whole) and the Individual consciousness the two together.7
Yes, something like that, but here it was clearer, more precise. Its not that I think, mind you.
0 1972-01-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
By consciously uniting with the Divine Force, all is possible in principle. But a procedure has to be found, depending on the case and the Individual.
The first condition is to have a physical nature that gives energy rather than draws energy from others.
0 1972-04-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, for all those who are born now and are here now have asked to participate in this, they have prepared for it in previous lives. From the standpoint of global knowledge, it would be interesting to know whats happening and how its happening. But from the Individual standpoint, its not exactly pleasant(!), the period is difficult: you are no longer on this side, not yet on the otherjust in between. There we stand.
Indeed, for passing into the supramental being it isnt necessary to pass though the overmind
0 1972-05-13, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the Individual being [Mother], its peculiar how both extremes coexist: the Individual feels like a complete cipher a thing with no strength, no force, no power of decision of any kind, but at the same time (Mother slowly lowers her fist), through that individuality such a tremendous Action is taking place! And totally unexpected, you know. Both collective and individual actions, which seem absolutely miraculous because they are like this (same gesture)all-powerful. And the two extremes are there AT THE SAME TIME.
Ive never had such a feeling of nothingnessnothingness. Nothing. I am nothing anymore. But at the same time, theres the vision, the perception of an absolutely irresistible Force (Mother lowers her fist). Its as if the Individual had to be nonexistent first in order to become a real instrument.
Yes, I too often have that feeling of complete void.
0 1972-05-26, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Each cellular nucleus holds in its chromosomes the plan of the entire organism. The chromosomic apparatus of any one cell represents both the totality of the Individual and the local organ it belongs to. This organization could best be compared to that of an ideal human community in which each member would be conscious of the whole community and at the same time of his own intelligent personal function within the community.
(Werner Schupbach)
0 1972-08-30, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can clearly see that instead of thought governing life, its consciousness. And when the consciousness remains quietly open to the Divine, all goes well. A lot of things constantly come into the consciousness, from the whole world, it would seem (gesture of being assailed from all sides): all the things that negate or oppose the divine Action. They keep coming all the time like this (same gesture). But if I can remain quiet (gesture of offering, hands open), in an attitude of (smiling) nonexistence, a sort of I dont know if its transparency I dont know if one should say transparency or immobility but its something in the consciousness thats like this (same gesture of offering, hands open). When it stays that way, all is well; but as soon as it starts stirring, that is, as soon as the Individuality comes to the forefront in any way, everything becomes detestable. Its really too much.
You see, the physical body has a millennium of past experiences that says, Why, that blissful state is impossible!this stupidity is what delays everything. Its as if the cells themselves, the cells of the body which are used to struggling and suffering, couldnt accept that things can be like this (same gesture of surrender, hands open). But when it is then its wonderful.
0 1972-10-25, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So my sole means is to remain quietvery, very quiet (Mother opens her hands upwards). To feel that the Individuality is nothing, absolutely nothingso the divine rays can pass, pass through it. Its the only solution. It must be the Divine who who fights the battle.
(silence)
--
Yes. You know, my impression is that the Individuality is like an image to focus the attention (humans need something they have always needed something on their scale to focus their attention), so the body tries its best not to obstruct the divine Force from passing through, it tries to suppress all its own interferences, but at the same time it sees itself as an image humans need to focus their attention.
(At this point, Governor J. enters the room, sits silently before Mother, remains a few minutes in meditation, then does his pranam and leaves the room.)
0 1972-12-20, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive often wondered about the right inner movement needed to go into that other region. There are basically two possible movements: a movement inwards in the direction of the soul, as it were, and a movement of annihilation of the Individuality, in which you are in a sort of impersonal vastness.
Both are needed.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. the Individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the Individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The next step of Descent is the Mind where the original unity and identity and harmony are disrupted to a yet greater degree, almost completely. The self-delimitation of consciousness which is proper to the Supermind and even to the Overmind, at least in its higher domainsgives way to self-limitation, to intolerant egoism and solipsism. The consciousness withdraws from its high and wide sweep, narrows down to introvert orbits. The sense of unity in the mind is, at most, a thing of idealism and imagination; it is an abstract notion, a supposition and a deduction. Here we enter into the very arcana of Maya, the rightful possession of Ignorance. the Individualities here have become totally isolated and independent and mutually conflicting lines of movement. Hence the natural incapacity of mind, as it is said, to comprehend more than one object simultaneously. The Super mind and, less absolutely, the Overmind have a global and integral outlook: they can take in each one in its purview all at once the total assemblage of things, they differentiate but do not divide the Supermind not at all, the Overmind not categorically. The Mind has not this synthetic view, it proceeds analytically. It observes its object by division, taking the parts piecemeal, dismantling them, separating them, and attending to each one at a time. And when it observes it fixes itself on one point, withdrawing its attention from all the rest. If it bas to arrive at a synthesis, it can only do so by collating, aggregating and summing. Mental consciousness is thus narrowly one pointed: and in narrowing itself, being farther away from the source it becomes obscurer, more and more outward gazing (parci khni) and superficial. The One Absolute in its downward march towards multiplicity, fragmentation and partiality loses also gradually its subtlety, its suppleness, its refinement, becomes more and more obtuse, crude, rigid and dense.
Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying according to the degree of immixture of the two, according to the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other respectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which three main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where consciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled it becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness, the intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the highest ranges of our consciousness and being.
--
This is, so far then, the original and primal line of descent. It is the line down which the absolute Reality, the absolute Consciousness and the absolute Delight have turned into unreality and unconsciousness and un delight. But it is not all loss and debit. There is a credit side too. For it is only in this way, viz, by the manifestation of utter Ignorance, that the supreme Absolute has become concrete, the Formless has entered into form, the Bodiless has found a body: what was originally an indeterminate equal Infinity of pure consciousness, has become determinate and dynamic in the Individual multiplicity of corporeal consciousness. What is the sense in all that, what is the gain or upshot? We shall presently see.
When consciousness has reached the farthest limit of its opposite, when it has reduced itself to absolutely unconscious and mechanical atoms of Matter, when the highest has descended into and become the lowest, then, by the very force of its downward drive, it has swung round and begun to mount up again. As it could not proceed farther on the downward gradient, having reached the extreme and ultimate limit of inconscience, consciousness had to turn round, as it were, by the very pressure of its inner impetus. First, then, there is a descent, a gradual involution, a veiling and closing up; next, an ascent, a gradual evolution, unfoldment and expression. We now see, however, that the last limit at the bottomMatteralthough appearing to be unconscious, is really not so: it is inconscient. That is to say, it holds consciousness secreted and involved within itself; it is, indeed, a special formulation of consciousness. It is the exclusive concentration of consciousness upon single points in itself: it is consciousness throwing itself out in scattered units and, by reason of separative identification with them and absorption into them, losing itself, forgetting itself in an absolute fixation of attention. The phenomenon is very similar to what happens when in the ordinary consciousness a worker, while doing a work, becomes so engrossed in it that he loses consciousness of himself, identifies himself with the work and in fact becomes the work, the visible resultant being a mechanical execution.
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Next is the domain of the Supermind with which the manifestation of the Divine starts. We have said it is the world of typal realities, of the first seed-realities, where the One and the Many are united and fused in each other, where the absolute unity of the Supreme maintains itself in undiminished magnitude and expresses and formulates itself perfectly in and through the original multiplicity. Here take birth the first personalities, absolute truth-forms of the Divine. Here are the highest gods, the direct formations of the Divine himself. Here are the Four Powers and Personalities of swara whom Sri Aurobindo has named after the Vaishnava terminology: (i) Mahavira, embodying the Brahmin quality of Knowledge and Light and wide Consciousness, (ii) Balarama, embodying the Kshatriya quality of Force and intense dynamism, (iii) Pradyumna, embodying the quality of love and beauty the Vaishya virtue of mutuality and harmony and solidarity, and (iv) Aniruddha, embodying the Sudra quality of competent service, of organisation and execution in detail. Corresponding with these Four there are the other Four Powers and Personalities of the Divine Mother war (i) Maheshwari, (ii) Mahakali, (iii) Mahalakshmi and (iv) Mahasaraswati. Next in the downward gradient comes the Overmind where the Individualised powers and personalities of the Divine tend to become self-sufficient and self-regarding; their absolute unity is loosened and the lines of multiplicity begin to be more independent of each other, each aiming at a special fulfilment of its own. Still the veil that is being drawn over the unity is yet transparent which continues to be sufficiently dynamic. This is the abode of the gods, the true and high gods: it is these that the Vedic Rishis appear to have envisaged and sought after. The all gods (vive dev) were indeed acknowledged to be but different names and forms of one supreme godhead (dev) it is the one god, says Rishi Dirghatamas, who is called multifariously whether as Agni or Yam a or Matariswan; it is the one god, again, who is described as having a thousand heads and a thousand feet. And yet they are separate entities, each has his own distinct and distinctive character and attribute, each demands a characteristic way of approach and worship. The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion.
The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the gods have become all quite separate, self-centred, each bounded in his own particular sphere and horizon. The overmind gods the true godsare creators in a world of balanced or harmoniously held difference; they are powers that fashion each a special fulfilment, enhancing one another at the same time (parasparam bhvayantah). Between the Overmind and the Mind there is a class of lesser godsthey have been called formateurs; they do not create in the strict sense of the term, they give form to what the anterior gods have created and projected. These form-makers that consolidate the encasement, fix definitely the image, have most probably been envisaged in the Indian dhynamrtis. But in the Mind the gods become still more fixed and rigid, stereotyped; the mental gods inspire exclusive systems, extreme and abstract generalisations, theories and principles and formulae that, even when they seek to force and englobe all in their cast-iron mould, can hardly understand or tolerate each other.
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The formulation or revelation of the Psyche marks another line of what we have been describing as the Descent of Consciousness. The phenomenon of individualisation has at its back the phenomenon of the growth of the Psyche. It is originally a spark or nucleus of consciousness thrown into Matter that starts growing and organising itself behind the veil, in and through the movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary. All that can be said is that it is there, in potentia, it exists, it is simple being: it has not started becoming. This is man's speciality: in him the psychic begins to be dynamic; to be organised and to organise, it is a psychic personality that he possesses. Now this flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Superperson) is the jvatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as the basis for the play of manifestation. They are not within the frame of manifestation (as the typal formations in the Supermind are), they are above or beyond or beside it and stand there eternally and invariably in and as part and parcel of the one supreme RealitySachchidananda. But the Jivatman from its own status casts its projection, representation, delegated formulationemanation, in the phraseology of the neo-Platonistsinto the manifestation of the triple complex of mind, life and body, that is to say, into the human vehicle, and thus stands behind as the psychic personality or the soul. This soul, we have seen, is a developing, organising focus of consciousness growing from below and comes to its own in the human being: or we can put it the other way, that is to say, when it comes to its own, then the human being appears. And it has come to its own precisely by a descent of its own self from above, in the same manner as with the other descents already described. Now, this coming to its own means that it begins henceforth to exercise its royal power, its natural and inherent divine right, viz, of consciously and directly controlling and organising its terrestrial kingdom which is the body and life and mind. The exercise of conscious directive will, supported and illumined by a self-consciousness, I that occurs with the advent of the Mind is a function of the I Purusha, the self-conscious being, in the Mind; but this self-conscious being has been able to come up, manifest itself and be active, because of pressure of the underlying psychic personality that has formed here.
Thus we have three characteristics of the human personality accruing from the psychic consciousness that supports and inspires it:(1) self-consciousness: an animal acts, feels and even knows, but man knows that he acts, knows that he feels, knows even that he knows. This phenomenon of consciousness turning round upon itself is the hallmark of the human being; (2) a conscious will holding together and harmonising, fashioning and integrating the whole external nature evolved till now; (3) a purposive drive, a deliberate and voluntary orientation towards a higher and ever higher status of individualisation and personalisation,not only a horizontal movement seeking to embrace and organise the normal, the already attained level of consciousness, but also a vertical movement seeking to raise the level, attain altogether a new poise of higher organisation.
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still Overmindwhose characteristic is a cosmic consciousness and a transcendence of all ego-senseis not the firm basis on which a new terrestrial organisation can stand and endure. It is still a basis of unstable equilibrium. For it is not the supernal light and, although it transcends all ignorance, yet does not possess that absolute synthetic unity, that transcendent power of consciousness which is at once the cosmic and the Individual. That is the domain of the Supermind.
The whole urge of evolutionary Nature today is to bring out first the Overmental principle and then through it the Supramental which will establish and fix upon earth the principle of Deity and the Supreme Divine.
02.04 - The Right of Absolute Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A nation cannot claim the right, even in the name of freedom, to do as it pleases. An individual has not that right, the nation too has not. A nation is a member of humanity, there are other members and there is the common welfare of all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action, in asserting its absolute freedom, may go against other nations, or against the general good. Such freedom has to be curbed and controlled. Collective lifeif one does not propose to live the life of the solitary the animal or the saintis nothing if not such a system of controls. "The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty. Law is such an interference; protection is such an interference; the rule which makes the will of the majority prevail is such an interference. The right to prevent such use of personal liberty as will injure the interests of the race is the fundamental law of society. From this point of view the nation is only using its primary rights when it restrains the Individual from buying or selling foreign goods." Thus spoke a great Nationalist leader in the days of Boycott and Swadeshi. What is said here of the Individual can be said of the nation too in relation to the greater good of humanity. The ideal of a nation or state supreme all by itself, with rights that none can challenge, inevitably leads to the cult of the Super-state, the Master-race. If such a monster is not to be tolerated, the only way left is to limit the absolute value of nationhood, to view a nation only as a member in a comity of nations forming the humanity at large.
A nation not free, still in bondage, cannot likewise justify its claim to absolute freedom by all or any means, at all times, in all circumstances. There are times and circumstances when even an enslaved nation has to bide its time. Man, in order to assert his freedom and individuality, cannot sign a pact with Mephistopheles; if he does so he must be prepared for the consequences. The same truth holds with regard to the nation. A greater danger may attend a nation than the loss of freedom the life and soul of humanity itself may be in imminent peril. Such a cataclysmic danger mankind has just passed through or is still passing through. All nations, however circumstanced in the old world, who have stood and fought on the side of humanity, by that very gesture, have acquired the rightand the might too,to gain freedom and greatness and all good things which would not be possible otherwise.
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An element of the human tragedy the very central core perhapsis the calvary of the Individual. Pasternak's third article of faith is human freedom, the freedom of the Individual. Indeed if evolution is to mean progress and growth it must base itself upon that one needful thing. And here is the gist of the problem that faces Pasternak (as Zhivago) in his own inner consciousness and in his outer social life. The problemMan versus Society, the Individual and the collective-the private and the public sector in modern jargonis not of today. It is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the Individual against the law of the State and sacrificed herself for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual claims to the demand of his people, the collective godhead.
Pasternak's tragedy runs on the same line. Progress and welfare of the group, of humanity at large is an imperative necessity and the collective personality does move in that direction. But it moves over the sufferings, over the corpses of individuals composing the collectivity. the Individuals, in one sense, are indeed the foci, the conscious centres that direct and impel the onward march, but they have something in them which is over and above the dynamism of physical revolution. There is an inner aspiration and preoccupation whose object is other than outer or general progress and welfare. There is a more intimate quest. The conflict is there. The human individual, in one part of his being, is independent and separate from the society in which he lives and in another he is in solidarity with the rest.
The freedom of the Individual is a double-edged swordit is a help to progress, it is also a bar. Individuals, great individuals, are the spearhead of progressive movements. They initiate new and advanced beginnings. But if freedom means whims and caprices, too great a stress on personal likes and dislikes, then that brings about a deviation in the straight path, or rather, obstacles in the forward march. And the advancing time-spirit or world-spirit has to push them and cast away. There is also the other side of the shield. Collectivity, like the Individual, may also be a help as well as a bar. It means the enlargement and diffusion of the Individual's gain, a sharing in wide' commonalty, an element or asset of human progress; it may also hamstring, for it is normally conservative and averse to movement and progress.
Zhivago at almost every step shows how the Individual is thwarted in his inner and personal fulfilmenteven in those matters that concern his higher and nobler inclination and pursuits, not merely his affairs of selfish interest. The demands of the collective urge, the progress that society needs and exacts is often a millstone that slowly grinds the Individual down to personal frustration and failure. That is, I suppose, the central lesson of Pasternak's autobiography.
That is why even when Pasternak speaks of social progress, a better humanity, we are not sure. For what matters is the present. A brave new world in the offing, yes. But how to take life in the meanwhile? Evidently, it is the life of the cross, you have to choose that or it is imposed upon you. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and in spite of what the world and life are, you can create within you, possess in your inner consciousness something of the divine element, the peace that passeth understanding, the purity and freedom and harmony with oneself and with the entire creation, including even one's neighbours.
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sole sake of the Individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of consciousness
(the supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earthnature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The relation between the Higher and the Lower, between the other world and this, the interaction between the two is all that mysticism means. The relation is spoken of sometimes as that of enmity and sometimes as that of friendliness. Ordinarily the two are incompatibles, enemies, as is quite natural. At times however, when the Individual is ripe for the turnover, the two collaborate. The lower consciousness aspires for the higher and the higher comes down and enters into the lower to purify and change it.
Various figures and images depict the nature and relation of the two. The lower is darkness and the night, the higher is light and the day. Sometimes it is the opposite: the lower is the day (ordinary common light), the higher is dark night (because unknown and unfamiliar or because of the very dazzle of its light). The lower is imaged at times as a woodland, a shelter for wild growths and roving animals. The higher is the hunter, with his hounds chasing the creatures of the lower domain. Also the higher is the serene infinite sky, the lower the raging sea below. Otherwise, again, the higher is the vast sea, tranquil or quietly rippling above and the lower is the solid material universe. The higher is the delightful sun, the lower is the muddy slimy earth of the bed of stones and rocks. The consummation, the dnouement is the interlocking between the two and a final coalescence in which the higher penetrates into the lower and the lower is sublimated into the higher and the two form one integral undivided reality.
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It must also be noted that all countries need not and cannot have the same pattern of economic life, even that of a successful economic life. A vast country like India, with the manifold resources of a whole continent, can at once be industrial and agriculturalmodern America, to some extent, is an example of this type. She can follow both the lines of economic development with equal vigour and success. And in the midst of an intensive and extensive agricultural and industrial occupation, there may be still room for the age-long, old-world cottage industry, for the Individual artisan or craftsman whose God-given hand may always give to things an added value beyond the reach of the mere machine.
With this perspective in view, keeping always in front the probable shape of things to come, one must learn to consider the present, look for those forces that make for the new world and thus help the course of evolution and progress. Nature does not care for her past formations, she is not bound to them; she is always throwing up chances and opportunitiesvariations-for new developments. Nature red in tooth and claw is only one side of the shield; and the picture is not as true today as it was even a few hundred years ago, in spite of the spells of devastating carnage she still allows in her surface movements. It may be that the very pressure and insistence of an inner harmony has brought to the fore, made acute difficulties and contraries that have to be met and solved for good.
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India should consider the present situation with calmness, detachment and wisdom, not hark back to the past, brooding over the mistakes and misdeeds of her erstwhile masters they are no longer masters; yes, forgiving and forgetting, one must face squarely the new situation and make the best use of it. India, that claims a spiritual heritage and a high and hoary civilisation, can afford to be idealistic even and envisage a deeper and higher law of Nature, of universal harmony and solidarity, of conscious co-operation. Apart from that, if as practical men, we look to our self-interest, then also it will be wise for us to take up the same line of procedure, viz., what idealism demands. A nation too, like the Individual, can be swayed by pride, prejudice, passion, a false sense of prestige and a spirit of vengeance. However natural these reactions may seem to be, in view of the conditions of their incidence, they possess, more often than not, the property of the boomerang, they hit back the originating source itself. It has been said, for example, that the origin of the present war the rise of Hitleris due to the Versailles Treaty that ended the last war, which was, in its turn a war of revenge having its origin on the field of Sedan; this campaign of 1870 again was the natural and inevitable outcome of the Napoleonic conquest. Thus there has been a seesaw movement in national relations without a definite issue. And pessimists of today aver that we are not come to the end of the spiral.
But we do not subscribe to such prognostics. There is no inevitability of the kind. "Time must have a stop." The two lower limbs of the dialectic must be rounded in then by a higher reality. For two reasons. First of, all, Nature herself moves towards synthesis and harmonydiscord and difference are part only of the process working for that eventual consummation. Secondly, the human spirit is there, with the urge of its inevitable destiny, to create its power in the vision and consciousness of the hidden truth and reality which 'surface contingencies seem often to deny.
02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Anarchisma certain school of philosophical or spiritual anarchismpresages, however, an agglutinative type of humanity. That is to say, there will be no hierarchy of groupings, in fact there will be no aggregates at all, the Individual will be the sole, the first and the last unit. the Individual, it is said, will have so developed and perfected its self-nature that by following the law of that nature, it will automatically and spontaneously live and move harmoniously with all the rest; each will be a self-contained unit and there will be a kind of pre-established harmony among all. Even if it be so, however, a hierarchical form of groupings in human organisation need not necessarily be barred out.
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02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A social organization must have two fundamental objects. The central purpose is to serve and help the Individual. That is the first thing to be remembered. Organization for the sake of organization is not the end. Organization for the sake of perpetuating a system, however laudable it may be, is not the end either. It is, as I say, by the service that an organization renders to its individual members, and not merely by its mechanical order and efficiency that it is to be judged. This service, I have said, is twofold. First, each individual must find his proper vocation: the right man in the right place. The function of each man must be in accordance with his nature and character. Secondly, each person, while fulfilling his Dharma, (that is the right word) must be trained, must have the opportunity to grow and increase in his being and consciousness. First of all, a prosperous, at least an adequately equipped outer life, and then as adequate a lebensraum for the inner personality to have its free and full play and expression.
A totalitarian equality takes men as blocks or chunks of wood and also cuts and clips them as such whenever and wherever needed, thrusts them indiscriminately into any nook and corner of the social framework for the sake of its upkeep and maintenance. It is something that is characteristic of a modern armythoroughly mechanisedin which men are not different from the nuts and bolts of a machine, all forming a stream-lined massive unity, where persons and individuals as such have no value or consideration, they are dumb and almost dead materials and when worn out just simply to be replaced by others. If it is to be compared to any living thing, we can think of only the regimentation that obtains in an ant-hill or a bee-hive.
Mechanical and totalitarian equality does injustice, to say the least, to the Individual, for it does not take into account the variable value and the particularity of each individual. It usually gives him a position and function in the society to which his inner nature and character do not at all respond. The result of such indifference to individuality is evident also in a modern society based as it is on so-called freedom, that is to say, on open competition and struggle. The tragedy of a Bankim eking out his subsistence as a bureaucratic official is not a rare spectacle but the very rule of the social system in vogue. Indeed the so-called steel-frame of governmental organization of our days sucks in all the best brains and few can survive this process of "evisceration, deprivation, destitution, desiccation and evacuation", to use the glowing and graphic words of T. S. Eliot, although in another connection; few can maintain or express after passing through this grinding or sucking machine their inner reality, the truth and beauty personal to them. The poet1 regrets:
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
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We have said individual or personal worth should be the chief concern of the social governance, to bring it to birth, to maintain and foster it is its principal function. This means naturally freedom, but not the freedom that is demanded by the Individualist as against the socialist or the collectivist. For there freedom means freedom for competition and rivalry, freedom for the egos, for selfish interests to fight and battle and survive who can. That is the motto of the competitive society in which we have been living for some time past. That system has become intolerable and hence all the seismic troubles in society today. What is needed is real freedom. For it is easy to see that under the competitive system the apparent freedom is only apparent, a make-believe. It is not freedom, that is to say, free choice and initiation that can work here, it is the pressure from rivals, the impact of adverse circumstances that determine one's will and choice. In the second place, it is not the deeper urges or capacities that are touched and awakened in this way, it is the superficial impulses and preoccupations that find a vent. Man is here only a link in a chain of reactions over which he has hardly any real control: one's decision is limited by conditions beyond one's reach, one's hands are forced, as the common phrase goes.
The problem then is this: how to arrive at the inner freedom, how to contact the inner man, the true person and personality? For we are aiming at nothing less than the Soul, the Self, the Divine in man, God's purpose in the Individual, the Individual as God's instrument. That is the beau idal, so to say, in the human personality which all schemes of social reconstruction must have constantly in view.
The question now is to devise ways and means of materialising this ideal. Circumstanced as man is, in doubt and darkness with regard to his inner nature, one most often does not know one's true vocation; those who do know their minds and are sure of their "mission in life" are the fortunate few, and very few indeed they are. Of the vast majority, some discover themselves only at the fag-end of their life or when they are already far too committed and in harness in alien fields and among alien faces; others do not discover themselves at all, they need no such revelation: these form the general mass in which the Individuals have not developed so far as to come out into any bold relief, they are cast into the stereotype mould, moved more or less by the same general forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally.
Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and organize things within that given framework, is, to say the least, only another form of the old laissez-faire system. Take Nature as it is, but go farther and beyond. That is the problem of all human endeavour.
In ancient times too there were conscious attempts to build and remould human society. The Rishis were not merely spiritual seers, but creators of the social order also. They saw by their vision the inner truths of things, they found principles and laws, right principles and correct laws which establish peace and stability, on the one hand, no doubt, but on the other hand serve also as the frame for the growth and fulfilment of the Individual being. The king with his executive body was there to see that the laws were observed and honoured. The later law-givers (the makers of codes, smritis) had not the direct and large vision of the Rishis, but they tried their best to maintain the laws as they understood them, elaborate them, change or modify wherever possible or needed under given circumstances. In ancient Europe too, it was Plato who envisaged the ideal Republic, a government of philosophers the wise who are not actively engaged in the turmoil of life, but stand aloof and detached and can see more of the game and accordingly legislate all the better. In modern times also the rise of a Feuhrer or a Dictator seems to have been a psychological necessity: the mass consciousness is in sore need of a guide, and as the right guide is not easily available, the way of the false prophet is smooth and wide open. As a protection and antidote against such a calamity, we tried here and there to found and organise a government of all talents.
But again, who are the talents and where are they? For a modern society produces at best clever politicians, but very few great souls if at all, who can inspire, guide and create. Not a system or organization, but such centres of forces, with creative vision and power, it is that that mankind sorely needs at this hour. System and organization come after, they can only be the embodiment of a creative vision.
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Personal value will mean then not productive value, but creative value, that is to say, the capacity to create values, that means the consideration of the psychological and moral makeup of the Individual.
What is the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization of producers and consumers, their relation and functions were, in many respects, what is called primitive. An American of today would laugh at their uncouth simplicity. And yet America has to bow down to those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly exaggerated holding the entire social fabric in its stifling grip, the culture spirit has been pushed into the background and made subservient to economic and other cruder forces. That was what Julien Benda, the famous French critic and moralist, once stigmatised as "La Trahison des Clercs"; only, the "clercs" did not voluntarily betray, but circumstanced as they were they could do no better. The process reached its climaxperhaps one should say the very nadirin the Nazi experiment and something of it still continues in the Russian dispensation. There the intellectuals or the intelligentsia are totally harnessed to the political machine, their capacities are prostituted in the service of a socio-economic plan. Poets and artists and thinkers are made to be protagonists and propagandists of the new order. It is a significant sign of the times how almost the whole body of scientists the entire Brain Trust of mankind today, one might sayhave been mobilised for the fabrication of the Atom Bomb. Otherwise they cannot subsist, they lose all economic status.
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As already stated, the remedy is to be sought in the salvage of the Individual. The present trend of social forces is towards movements in the mass. That was necessary perhaps; for larger, wider, indeed world-wide unities have to be found and established for the unification of the whole of humanity. But in the drive towards that-goal Nature seems to have overlooked for the moment the case of the Individual, and naturally, man has been blind and one-sided in his attempts to reform and rebuild society and the world. This neglected thread has to be taken up again and put back into the web of social life. The value of the Individual, the worth and speciality of each person has to be found and recognised; indeed it is round that centre that society can best be reformed and remade. And this can only be done by a spiritual outlook. For, the true individual is founded in the spirit, the spiritual consciousness; so long as man is limited to his body, life and mind, and his functions are solely determined by his earthly nature, so long he must needs be taken as a mere element in the mass, the cosmic mass. The true individual or person emerges only when something of man's spiritual being finds expression in these lower elements of his nature. And when man totally transcends his inferior sphere of existence and rises into his divine status where things are marshalled and organised through each individual truth-centre, then only there is the chance of a perfect social system descending upon earthly life.
Perhaps this is a far cry from the level of our normal humanity. But things have to be regarded and moulded from the highest heights; otherwise there will be no real solution, there can be only a temporary make-believe and a final frustration.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nor can socialism remedy all the ills society suffers from, if it merely or mainly means the abolition of private enterprise and the assumption by the State of the entire economic and even cultural or educational apparatus of the society. Even as an economic proposition State Socialism, which is only another name of Totalitarianism, is hardly an unmixed good. First of all, however selfish and profiteering the Individual may be, still, one must remember that it is always the Individual who is adventurous and inventive, it is he who discovers, creates new things and beautiful things. A collective or global enterprise makes for massiveness and quantity, but it means also uniformity, often a dead uniformity: for variety, for originality, as well as for the aesthetic tone and the human touch, the personal element is needed, seems to be indispensable. Education in such a system would mean a set routine and pattern, an efficient machine to bring out consistently and continuously uniform types of men who are more or less 'automatons, mechanical and regimented in their make-up and behaviour. An all-out socialistic Government will bear down and entomb the deeper springs of human consciousness, the magic powers of initiative and creativity that depend upon individual liberty and the free play of personal choice. We do not deny that Socialism is an antidote to another malady in the social body the parcellation, the fragmentation into a thousand petty interestsall aggressive and combative-of the economic strength of a community, and also the stupendous inequality and maldistribution of wealth and opportunity. But it brings in its own poison.
It is a great illusion, as has been pointed out by many, that a collective and impersonal body cannot be profiteers and war-mongers. A nation as a whole can very well be moved by greed and violence and Sieglust (passion for conquest)Nazism has another name, it is also called National Socialism. Everything depends not upon the form, but the spirit that animates the form. It is the spirit, man's inner nature that is to be handled, dealt with and changed; outer systems and forms have only a secondary importance.
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So the cry is for greater human values. Man needs food and shelter, goes without saying, but he yearns for other things also, air and light: he needs freedom, he needs culturehigher thoughts, finer emotions, nobler urges the field and expression of personal worth. The acquisition of knowledge, the creation of beauty, the pursuit of philosophy, art, literature, and science in their pure forms and for their own sake are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility must be free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all men should have work and wages, it is not sufficient that I all should have learnt the three R's, it is not sufficient that they should understand their rightssocial, political, economic and claim and vindicate them. Nor is it sufficient for men to r become merely useful or indispensablealthough happy and I contentedmembers of a collective body. the Individual must be free, free in his creative joy to bring out and formulate, in thought, in speech, in action, in all the modes of expression, the truth, the beauty, the good he experiences within. An all-round culture, a well-developed mind, a well-organised life, a well-formed body, a harmonious working of all the members of the system at a high level of consciousness that is man's need, for there lies his self-fulfilment. That is the ideal of Humanismwhich the ancient Grco-Roman culture worshipped, which was again revived by the Renaissance and which once again became a fresh and living force after the great Revolution and is still the high light to which Science and modern knowledge turns.
The More Beyond
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Science of the West has discovered evolution as the secret of life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of consciousness: even, consciousness has been regarded as an incident and not the whole secret of the meaning of the evolution. An evolution has been admitted by certain minds in the East, certain philosophies and Scriptures, but there its sense has been the growth of the soul through developing or successive forms and many lives of the Individual to its own highest reality.
For if there is a conscious being in the form, that being can hardly be a temporary phenomenon of consciousness; it must be a soul fulfilling itself and this fulfilment can only take place if there is a return of the soul to earth in many successive lives, in many successive bodies.
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have said that this is not our path. The divine grace is a factwithout that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace, its manifestation and play may be possible. For, just as the divine grace is true, so it is equally true that the Individual is essentially one with the Divine, sin and ignorance are his external sloughs, identity with the Divine is his natural right. We, therefore, Jay equal stress on this hidden aspect of man, on the freedom of his will, on his personal effort which is the determining factor of his destiny. For in the field of ignorance or half-knowledge, in the nether hemisphere of his consciousness, it is this power that directly builds up that ordered state of the being with whose support the divine grace can actualise itself and give a material shape to the integral fulfilment.
Hence the Mother gives the direction that though external lapses may be natural to our external nature, now that our inner consciousness has awakened, the vision and the earnestness to see and recognise our mistakes have developedassuming that this much of development has taken place in uswe must awake to the situation and be on the alert, we must bring such control to bear upon our vital impulses, upon our nervous centres as will prevent, for good and all, errors and stupidities from upsurging again and invading our physical self and our field of action. When we have reached this stage, we have acquired the capacity to ascend to another level of consciousness. It is then that we can lay the foundations of a new order in the worldit is then that along with the purification, the achievement will begin to take on a material form.
03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is this pluralisation which has resulted in a necessary polarisation in the human consciousness. We have gained a power which was not only rare but perhaps totally absent in the old world, at least in the general mind; we have reached in a novel way that very wideness or wholeness which was at the outset negatived by the urge towards separativeness and parcellation. Thus the modern mind can take in more view-points than oneeven contrary onesat the same time. the Individual has acquired the capacityto put it in popular languageto enter into another's skin, not to be confined to its own outlook, limited within its linear groove, but to be able, with ease and grace to look through the eyes of others, even though they be on the other side of the arena. A wide and supple, large and subtle perception that goes round the entire contour of the observed object, not a perspective but a global view, is a characteristic capacity of the modern mind. We can see the same thing from all angles and distances; we can turn our gaze upon ourselves; we can see ourselves not only with our own way of looking but also as others see us, with equal detachment and impartiality. At least this is the character of the cultured, the representative man of today. Modern art too has sought in some of its significant expressions to demonstrate this protean nature of truth and reality, to bring out the simultaneity of its multiple modes, to give a living sense of its tangled dynamism.
We spoke of the extreme atomism of modern Science that has thrown into the background the solid unity of creation and is laying emphasis for the moment more upon the division and scattering of forces than upon the cohesiveness and identity of the substratum; still that unity has not been abrogated but has been maintained on the whole, even if as an underlying note. Not only so, the reign of multiplicity, by a curious detour, is working towards a discovery of enhanced unity. The plurality of the modern consciousness is moving towards a richer and intenser unity; it is not a static, but a dynamic unitya unity that does not suppress or merely transcend the diversity and disparity of its components but holds them together as an immanent force, and brings forth out of each its fullness of individuality. In the same way the present-day movement towards internationalism or supra-nationalism has produced a rebound towards regionalism or infra-nationalism. And the voice of anarchism tends to be as insistent as that of collectivism.
Wikipedia - Eilenberg-Zilber theorem -- Links the homology groups of a product space with those of the individual spaces
Wikipedia - Freedom for the individual
Wikipedia - Home Nations -- The individual nations within the United Kingdom
Wikipedia - Inclusive fitness -- A measure of evolutionary success based on the number of offspring the individual supports
Wikipedia - Individualism -- Moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual
Wikipedia - Individualist anarchism -- Branch of anarchism that emphasize the individual and their will
Wikipedia - Jivatva -- State of life or state of the individual soul in Hinduism
Wikipedia - N-body problem -- Problem of predicting the individual motions of a group of celestial objects interacting with each other gravitationally
Wikipedia - Proxy marriage -- Wedding in which one or both of the individuals being united are not physically present
Wikipedia - Social justice -- Concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society
Wikipedia - Statutory rape -- Sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573002-transmission-and-the-individual-remix
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242068.The_Individual_In_A_Social_World
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/255262.The_Individual_Psychology_of_Alfred_Adler
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264260.The_Individual_and_the_Cosmos_in_Renaissance_Philosophy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/312650.The_Individual_and_the_Nature_of_Mass_Events
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43548917-the-individualist
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43746599-kindness-and-the-individual
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6091576-the-creative-process-in-the-individual
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662912.Authority_and_the_Individual
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665601.The_Individual_and_the_Political_Order
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/811908.The_Individual_And_His_Religion
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8466361-the-creative-process-in-the-individual
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Three_Roots#The_individual_.27roots.27
Integral World - Re-orienting Wilber, The Significance of a Proper Understanding of the Individual-Social Relationship, Andy Smith
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-individual-is-immortal-bettys.html
The Tom & Jerry Comedy Show (1980 - 1981) - The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show is an American animated television program produced by Filmation for MGM Television in 1980, on CBS for Saturday mornings. The show lasted two seasons (with season two consisting of reruns) and the individual episodes were eventually added to syndicated Tom and Jerry pa...
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Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG - Individual Eleven (2006) ::: 8.4/10 -- Kkaku kidtai: S.A.C. 2nd GIG - Individual eleven (original title) -- 2007 Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG - Individual Eleven Poster -- A new terrorist organization known as the Individual Eleven is bent on mass destruction. Will the cyborg detective heroine and her elite anti-crime unit be able to stop them? Director: Kenji Kamiyama
https://humanscience.fandom.com/wiki/Laws_of_Accomplishment_are_the_same_for_the_Individual,_Organisation_and_Society
https://humanscience.fandom.com/wiki/Planes_of_Being_of_the_Individual
https://ibgame.fandom.com/wiki/Death_of_the_Individual
Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) -- -- Fanworks -- 10 eps -- Other -- Slice of Life Comedy -- Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) Aggressive Retsuko (ONA) -- Some offices have stereotypical dynamics: the chauvinistic pig of a boss who never does any real work; the employees whose goal is to suck up to the boss; the ones whose lives seem perfect; and the individuals who have all the actual work pushed onto them. Retsuko the red panda is in the last group, as she stays late most nights to make up the work her coworkers are too lazy to do themselves. -- -- Her relief from the stress of her everyday life comes in the form of singing death metal at a local karaoke club. Night after night, Retsuko channels her grief into a microphone and considers the place to be her own personal sanctuary. But as she moves further away from her comfort zone and the ideas people have of her, she discovers that letting others into her world of death metal may not be such a bad thing. -- -- ONA - Apr 20, 2018 -- 122,453 7.68
Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- -- David Production -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Supernatural Shounen -- Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- After his confrontation in the Nether with his younger brother Shou, Shinra Kusakabe's resolve to become a hero that saves lives from the flame terror strengthens. Finding a way to turn the Infernals back into people, unraveling the mystery of the Evangelist and Adolla Burst, and saving his mother and Shou—these are the goals Shinra has in mind. However, he has come to realize that attaining these goals will not be easy, especially with the imminent danger the Evangelist poses. -- -- The Evangelist's plan is clear: to gather the eight pillars—the individuals who possess Adolla Burst—and sacrifice them to recreate the Great Cataclysm from 250 years ago. Having been revealed by the First Pillar that the birth of a new pillar is approaching, Shinra is determined to protect his fellow pillars from the Evangelist. Thus, the fiery battle between the Special Fire Force and the Evangelist ignites. Together with the Special Fire Force, Shinra's fight continues as he uncovers the truth about the Great Cataclysm and the nature of Adolla Bursts, as well as the mysteries behind human combustion. -- -- 402,357 7.75
Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- -- David Production -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Supernatural Shounen -- Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou -- After his confrontation in the Nether with his younger brother Shou, Shinra Kusakabe's resolve to become a hero that saves lives from the flame terror strengthens. Finding a way to turn the Infernals back into people, unraveling the mystery of the Evangelist and Adolla Burst, and saving his mother and Shou—these are the goals Shinra has in mind. However, he has come to realize that attaining these goals will not be easy, especially with the imminent danger the Evangelist poses. -- -- The Evangelist's plan is clear: to gather the eight pillars—the individuals who possess Adolla Burst—and sacrifice them to recreate the Great Cataclysm from 250 years ago. Having been revealed by the First Pillar that the birth of a new pillar is approaching, Shinra is determined to protect his fellow pillars from the Evangelist. Thus, the fiery battle between the Special Fire Force and the Evangelist ignites. Together with the Special Fire Force, Shinra's fight continues as he uncovers the truth about the Great Cataclysm and the nature of Adolla Bursts, as well as the mysteries behind human combustion. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 402,357 7.75
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou -- -- Passione -- 24 eps -- Visual novel -- Dementia Horror Mystery Psychological Supernatural Thriller -- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou -- Rika Furude and her group of friends live in the small mountain village of Hinamizawa; in June 1983, they welcome transfer student Keiichi Maebara into their ranks, making him the only boy in their group. After school, they have fun playing games and spending each day living their lives to the fullest. Despite this seemingly normal routine, Keiichi begins noticing strange behavior from his friends, who seem to be hiding the town's dark secrets from him. -- -- Elsewhere, a certain person watches these increasingly unsettling events unfold and remembers all the times that this, and other similar stories, have played out. Using that knowledge, this person decides to fix these broken worlds. However, when certain variables change, the individual is faced with a horrifying realization: they have no idea what to expect or how to stop the impending tragedy. -- -- 176,218 7.17
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou -- -- Passione -- 24 eps -- Visual novel -- Dementia Horror Mystery Psychological Supernatural Thriller -- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou -- Rika Furude and her group of friends live in the small mountain village of Hinamizawa; in June 1983, they welcome transfer student Keiichi Maebara into their ranks, making him the only boy in their group. After school, they have fun playing games and spending each day living their lives to the fullest. Despite this seemingly normal routine, Keiichi begins noticing strange behavior from his friends, who seem to be hiding the town's dark secrets from him. -- -- Elsewhere, a certain person watches these increasingly unsettling events unfold and remembers all the times that this, and other similar stories, have played out. Using that knowledge, this person decides to fix these broken worlds. However, when certain variables change, the individual is faced with a horrifying realization: they have no idea what to expect or how to stop the impending tragedy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 176,218 7.17
Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG -- -- Production I.G -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Sci-Fi Mystery Police Mecha Seinen -- Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG -- Following the closure of the "Laughing Man" case, Section 9 is re-established by Japan's newly elected Prime Minister, Youko Kayabuki, to combat the persistent threat of cyber-terrorism. -- -- A group calling themselves "The Individual Eleven" has begun committing acts of terror across Japan. While Motoko Kusanagi, Daisuke Aramaki, Batou, and the other members of Section 9 investigate this new menace, the Japanese government faces a separate crisis, as foreign refugees displaced by the Third World War seek asylum in Japan. But as the members of the special-ops team continually encounter Gouda Kazundo—a leading member of the Cabinet Intelligence Service—in their hunt, they begin to suspect that he may be involved, and that the events of the refugee crisis and The Individual Eleven may be more connected than they realize... -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Manga Entertainment -- TV - Jan 1, 2004 -- 194,747 8.54
Warau Salesman Tokubetsu Bangumi -- -- Shin-Ei Animation -- 14 eps -- Manga -- Psychological Supernatural Seinen -- Warau Salesman Tokubetsu Bangumi Warau Salesman Tokubetsu Bangumi -- A special program of Warau Salesman, these episodes were released in a blast format on 3 days in a nearly 2 hour long timeslot each. The individual episodes have their own OPs. The first blast release differed from the main series by having live-action footage of real locations in Japan before delving into the story for each episode. The 2nd had Moguro with the Master interacting with the viewer as if behind the scenes for a studio before delving into each episode. And the 3rd had Moguro and the Master playing outside in the snow as if reporting on an on-location event to the viewer before delving into each episode. -- Special - Dec 26, 1992 -- 653 N/A -- -- Nouryou Anime: Denkyuu Ika Matsuri -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Psychological Dementia Horror -- Nouryou Anime: Denkyuu Ika Matsuri Nouryou Anime: Denkyuu Ika Matsuri -- Death is the gateway to birth. The deceased crosses the line to join the kingdom of the dead. He sees there the dance of the sperm and the egg. He is drawn towards the sky. This is the path to the afterlife. -- -- (Source: starandshadow.org.uk) -- Movie - ??? ??, 1993 -- 615 4.58
Suspending the Individual Mandate Penalty Law Equals Fairness Act
The Individuals
The Individuals (New Jersey band)
Tradition and the Individual Talent
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